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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22689118">The Belonging You Seek</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/bastet_in_april/pseuds/bastet_in_april'>bastet_in_april</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman &amp; Terry Pratchett, Star Wars - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>But also not, Good Omens Big Bang, Good Omens Big Bang 2019, I am so sorry, I just really love lightsabers okay, I know the timeline makes no sense, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Light Angst, Multi, Obi-Wan is always running late, Sith aesthetic, Star Wars References, They are still an angel and a demon, and neither, but with lightsabers, go with it, jedi libraries, mentions of Sabine Wren and Han Solo, not a human AU, weird amalgam of show and book canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 10:00:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>32,601</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22689118</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/bastet_in_april/pseuds/bastet_in_april</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Good Omens: Starmageddon</p>
<p>It is a period of cold war. <br/>Heaven and Hell are preparing <br/>their ethereal and occult forces<br/>for the Great War, the final battle for supremacy, <br/>and the galaxy will be their battleground.</p>
<p>(The narrator would like you to imagine this text crawling slowly across a star field, as bombastic music swells. Who says Armageddon can’t be the cinema event of the summer?)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Anathema Device/Newton Pulsifer, Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Good Omens Big Bang 2019</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. A Long Time Ago...</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is my entry in the Good Omens Big Bang. My life imploded a bit in the last month I worked on it, and finishing it at all was a near thing. I am deeply grateful to my beta Dana, my artists, Shi and crystalphobic, and to the mods. Much of the dialogue is courtesy of the show and the book, as this is a retelling of the events of Armageddon in a galaxy far, far away.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“Well, that went down like a lead balloon.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sorry, what was that?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I said, well, that one went down like a lead balloon.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes. Yes, it did rather.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Bit of an overreaction, if you ask me. First offense, and all. I mean, I can’t see what’s so bad about knowing the difference between good and evil anyway.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Crawly had been ordered to “get up there, and cause some trouble,” he hadn’t expected to find himself having a fairly amiable chat with an angel, a personification of all that was good and light. The angel seemed similarly bewildered to find himself being chatted up by the proverbial serpent in the garden, a demon and a manifestation of wicked darkness. By all rights, they ought to have tried to kill each other on sight. That was what darkness and light </span>
  <em>
    <span>did</span>
  </em>
  <span>, wasn’t it? They opposed one another, struggling for dominance in the universe. The angel ought to have celestial steel aimed at Crawly’s throat. Crawly ought to be wrapping vicious coils around the angel, fangs sinking in deep.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But really, that all seemed like a lot of work.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crawly had done his bit already, hadn’t he, tempting Eve into taking a bite of the apple. (Course, it hadn’t taken much persuading. Smart girl, that one. Crawly could appreciate a willingness to question authority, and think for one’s self.) Why put in overtime, when it wasn’t being asked of him? Besides, the company was unexpectedly pleasant.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crawly couldn’t remember much about his time in Heaven. It was mostly a series of impressions, and feelings, rather than any sort of concrete detail. Still, he very much doubted that he’d ever come across any other angel who would have given his divine-issued flaming sword to humanity, sheerly due to compassion and concern for their safety and comfort. (1)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crawly glanced back at the apple tree. It wasn’t particularly large or verdant, in comparison to any of the other lush plants in the Garden, but there was something about it that stood out. He’d first noticed it as he sunned himself in its branches, letting his black scales soak up the warmth of the sunlight while he waited for Eve to come walking past the tree. He’d heard the tree called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and he wondered if some of that knowledge had permeated the tree itself, not just its fruit. He had a sense of the tree being aware of his presence, his intentions--a sort of acknowledgement. It was as if the tree were part of some great web of choice and consequence, connection, and free will. But perhaps he was just imagining all that (3). Crawly had found, during his time in the Garden, that he quite liked plants, and the apple tree, in particular. He thought, reflectively, that any plants he saw in the future would have quite a high standard to meet, to even approach equalling it in Crawly’s eyes. (4)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Somewhere above them, slate black clouds opened up, and the first rain began to fall. The angel and the serpent looked up, startled, as time began to tick forward slowly and inexorably towards an end, the first grain of sand slipping free from the top of some unfathomable hourglass. Aziraphale glanced over at the darkly-robed figure of the demon, as Crawly shuddered and drew in on himself. Wordlessly, the angel unfurled one downy white wing above the demon, shielding him from the rain.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On that Garden wall in Eden, even as so many things came to an end, many more were beginning. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After that, things took a turn, and time went a bit strange. Humans spread out across the stars, in a way that no one, except perhaps a smiling figure in a pitch dark room, could have possibly predicted. And the earthly representatives of Heaven and Hell went along with them, travelling to distant planets, exploring the galaxy and learning to love the experience of being in it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So, let us not skip ahead to 6,000 years later, but rather to </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… (5)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Good Omens: Starmageddon</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It is a period of cold war. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Heaven and Hell are preparing </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>their ethereal and occult forces</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>for the Great War, the final battle for supremacy, </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>and the galaxy will be their battleground.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Anathema Device, professional descendant</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>of witch and prophetess, Agnes Nutter,</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>guided by the prophecies of her ancestor</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>has come to the planet Alderaan</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>to seek out the cause of the foretold Armageddon.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Heaven and Hell’s earthly representatives</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>have secretly come to an Arrangement,</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>in order to enjoy the pleasures of the world</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>without the knowledge of their respective employers.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>In a graveyard, on an obscure planet in the Outer Rim,</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>the Dukes of Hell, Hastur and Ligur lurk,</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>awaiting Crowley’s arrival, carrying a bassinet….</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>***</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dramatis Personae:</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale: An angel, and a Jedi archivist (6). Wears a lot of beige. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley: An angel who did not fall, so much as vaguely saunter downward. Enjoys the Sith aesthetic.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Agnes Nutter: A witch, gifted with prophecy through the Force. Ahead of her time, and all too aware of it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newton Pulsifer: Uniquely gifted with the ability to confound technology (including Death Stars). A Witchfinder Private.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema Device: Professional descendant and witch. Good with a theodolite. Better with a speeder.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shadwell: A Witchfinder Sargeant. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Madam Tracy: The owner of a cantina. Also offers massage and light discipline, by appointment.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Luke Skywalker: The antichrist.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia Organa: ALSO the antichrist.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Biggs Darklighter: Luke’s childhood friend. An aspiring pilot.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Amilyn Holdo: Leia’s childhood friend. An aspiring diplomat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Artoo: An astromech Droid, and a Hound of Hell.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Threepio: A protocol Droid, and a Hound of Hell.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Obi-Wan Kenobi: A Jedi Master in exile. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Darth Vader: A Dark Lord of the Sith. (Not actually the Devil. ...Probably). Hates sand.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Padme Naberrie Amidala: Really deserved better than all of this nonsense. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Beelzebub: Prince of Hell, Lord of the Flies.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hastur: Duke of Hell. Aspiring Lurker.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ligur: Duke of Hell. Champion Lurker.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gabriel: An Archangel. Likes: jogging, sharp uniforms, and the violent end of the galaxy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Metatron: Voice of God (according to Metatron).</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>God: God.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Force: The Force. (We don’t talk about midichlorians here.)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Famine: Famine. A Horseperson of the Apocalypse. </span>
  <span>Likes sand.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>War: War. A Horseperson of the Apocalypse. </span>
  <span>Really loves Mandalorian armor.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Pollution: Pollution. Promoted after Pestilence retired. As for Pestilence, he handed in his letter of resignation, while muttering grimly, “A broken heart? What kind of cause of death is a broken heart? Whatever happened to the good old days of plague, influenza, and typhoid…? Bugger this for a lark...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Death: DEATH.</span>
</p>
<p><br/>***</p>
<p>
  <span>1) Unknown to Crawly, at cost to his title and power, as well; the moment the angel Aziraphale had willingly parted with the holy weapon, he had ceased to be one of the Cherubim, demoted and reduced to a Principality, and</span>
  <span> the departing humans had taken within them that portion of divine power, all unknowing. It was in humanity’s hands, now, and Crawly’s own actions had given them the agency to make the choice of what they would do with it.</span>
  <span> At the moment, that mostly seemed to be roasting the lion that had been menacing the pair. But in the future, who knew? (2)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>2) One remarkable witch, with a gift for foresight, as it happened.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>3) Crawly had no way of knowing it, at the time, but the tree of Eden would go on to produce a rare few saplings, none of which produced fruit, but which became quite remarkable trees of another sort. The Jedi would call them uneti, growing them in their ancient temples, and they were the only force-sensitive trees in the galaxy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>4) Of course, they never could.</span>
</p>
<p>5) <span>The narrator would like you to imagine this text crawling slowly across a star field, as bombastic music swells. Who says Armageddon can’t be the cinema event of the summer? (Or, indeed, of all time, which is coming swiftly to an end.)</span></p>
<p>6) <span>At least, the Jedi had assumed he must be a Jedi archivist, since he was so often found in the archives, glaring at Padawans (and Masters) who dare to dogear corners of pages in ancient tomes, or handle holocrons with sticky hands.</span></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Antichrist(s)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>It was all happening far, far too fast. He was panicking, he could feel it, like the itchy, crawling urge to climb out of his own skin. The snake he sometimes was could do it, but what good would that do? It wouldn’t change the fact that the galaxy only had eleven more years before it ceased to exist. Crowley had thought he’d have ages yet, before things came to an end. </p><p>Crowley could feel a scream wanting to force its way up his throat, and determinedly strangled it before it could get past his ribcage. </p><p>The metallic pod-shaped bassinet in the backseat of his sleek, black speeder was ominously silent. Polis Massa was an unremarkable asteroid, but its hospital facility was where everything would kick off.</p><p>His instructions were simple. Swap the antichrist with the baby of the wife of the Senator (1) of a Core World with strong ties to the banking syndicates. Easy. The sooner he got off this depressing little asteroid, the sooner he could flee to Aziraphale’s bookshop, and, from there, into a wine bottle.</p><p>It hadn’t occurred to Hell that there might be more than one baby being born in the hospital at the time the antichrist was to be delivered. They certainly hadn’t accounted for a Dark Lord of the Sith having a meltdown in the vicinity, resulting in alarming levels of soap-quality domestic drama that “Days of Our Galactic Lives” could only aspire to. Or the Jedi having developed their own convoluted plans to shuffle babies without the galaxy’s (or the Emperor’s) knowledge.</p><p>So it was - through a combination of human error, the desire of a med-droid to be useful, and the failure of a demon to actually <em> look inside </em> a suspiciously heavy capsule (due to a strong desire to escape the proximity of the Dread Beast Who Is Called Dragon) - that four babies wound up <em> not at all </em> where they were expected to be. Round, and round they go. Where they stop? Well.</p><p>Amilyn Holdo is handed over to the Senator’s wife, a Gatalentan woman with brightly dyed coral hair, and the satanic med-droids metaphorically pat themselves on the back, congratulating themselves on a job well done, anti-christ delivered. The senator’s wife is hurling veiled barbs at a holo of the Senator, too absorbed in his work to actually be present for the birth of his daughter.</p><p>The “surplus baby,” who was actually the son of the senator and his wife, was discreetly adopted by a couple of moisture farmers on an Outer Rim planet called Tatooine. No, not those moisture farmers. Other ones. They named him Biggs.</p><p>The med-droids also found homes for the other two babies, whom they assumed were surplus, as well (2), and they were shuffled into various sets of human arms. Yes, such a shame about being orphaned so tragically; how very kind of you to look after the poor things, best be on your way now, you’re saving us a lot of trouble and paperwork by adopting so discreetly. (Really, though, the med-droids were glad to see the Nabooan Senator’s companions go; they were far too prone to dramatics, the whole lot of them. Organics, honestly!)</p><p>Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Knight in exile, ferried the infant Luke Skywalker to Tatooine, the planet once famously described as the point farthest from the bright center of the universe, blissfully unaware that he was in fact carrying the sleeping Adversary, Destroyer of Kings.</p><p>Bail Organa cradles his new adopted daughter, his heart full of hope and fear, as he takes her to join his wife Breha on Alderaan, not knowing that the sweet brown eyes looking up at him belong, in fact, to the Great Beast Who Is Called Abaddon.</p><p>Yes, there were <em> two </em> of them. Crowley <em> really </em> should have looked into that bassinet. But nobody’d ever said it’d be <em> twins. </em> </p><p>***</p><p>You may be asking what happened to Senator Padme Naberrie’s actual offspring, if they were swapped with the infant anti-christ(s).</p><p>That, dear reader, is one of the great mysteries of the galaxy. And after all, what are the odds that Padme’s son would wind up on Corellia, only to join the Imperial Academy (and wash out dramatically), become a rebel and a smuggler, and the greatest pilot in the galaxy (if he did say so, himself)? What are the odds that Padme’s daughter would wind up on Mandalore, only to join the Imperial Academy (and wash out dramatically), become a rebel and wielder of the Darksaber, and the greatest artist in the galaxy (if she did say so, herself). What are the odds, reader?</p><p>Never tell me the odds. </p><p>***</p><p>Aziraphale’s bookshop was in an off-putting dimly-lit relic of a building in the theater district of Aldera (3). It was cluttered, and had a faint scent of mildew (4) and old paper that clung to any hapless prospective shopper who dared step inside, hoping to peruse the stacks.</p><p>The bookshop contained all manner of texts, from ancient Pantoran law books, to misprints of the Jedi and Sith codes (Aziraphale was quite proud of these. They were all considered heretical texts, and he had put himself in considerable peril pinching them from Jedi library vaults and Sith lairs over the millenia), to maps of ancient forests on Kashyyyk, to cheesy romance novels featuring a daring pilot and her distressed beaux, who perpetually needed to be rescued. It also contained books of prophecy, a particular specialty of Aziraphale’s. Humans were so remarkably creative, and that applied to their wild and spice-fogged visions of the future as much as it did to any other aspect of life. Aziraphale quite enjoyed having a giggle over a lovely first edition of the Chronicles of Kadaan, Supreme Prophet of the Dark Side, or the Prophecy of the Chosen One. What utter nonsense! Honestly. Aziraphale’s was the greatest collection of prophetic texts in the galaxy; the Emperor would have gone green with envy, if he had had any idea, at all, that it existed.</p><p>However, there was one gaping hole in Aziraphale’s collection, one book he coveted above all others, and that was <em> The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch </em>. </p><p>Agnes hadn’t been a Jedi. She hadn’t been a Sith, either. What she <em> had </em> been was remarkably gifted. She had been able to use her connection to the Force to peer forward through time, along the unbroken line of her descendants. She was the only prophet to have never, not once, gotten it wrong, which was why her prophecies were “nice” (meaning correct), and “accurate”. Only one copy of her book of prophecies had ever been published, and it had vanished from the record hundreds of years ago. </p><p>Currently, rather than perusing prophetic texts, Aziraphale was carefully repairing the damaged spine of a book detailing the construction of the early forms of lightsabers, from the time when they had been attached to external batteries that were worn like backpacks. (5) Aziraphale preferred paper books to data pads or holocrons, whenever possible. He was firmly of the opinion that not all technological advances were improvements.</p><p>Aziraphale’s antiquated comm system suddenly chirped obnoxiously loudly, the sound startling the angel badly enough that he accidentally smeared a bit of book-binding adhesive along the edge of the volume’s leather spine. Aziraphale huffed with annoyance, and discreetly vanished the mess with a small gesture of his hand. He set the book down carefully, and tapped the comm to accept the incoming call. </p><p>There wasn’t a holo projection, Aziraphale’s comm wasn’t anything that modern, but the angel could tell from the sound of rushing wind and angry shouting in the background of the call, that Crowley had placed it while flying (probably alarmingly fast) in his speeder. “Aziraphale?” His voice was grim. “Tomorrow, at noon. The usual place. We need to talk.”</p><p>***</p><p>They were in the park, feeding the ducks. </p><p>The usual place was a discreet bench in the Queen Aquilae Memorial Park in Aldera City, Alderaan. The bench overlooked a broad duck pond, in which about a dozen of the brown and green-feathered birds swam, not so much oblivious to the clandestine meetings happening around them, as unconcerned with the details, so long as the various smugglers, diplomats, and government attaches brought them bread as an offering to ensure their continued silence on the matter. (6)</p><p>They looked an unlikely pair. Aziraphale was dressed in pale shades of beige and ivory, his clothing out of date by several decades, if not centuries. In fact, he appeared to be wearing a set of robes. He was worrying the hem of his tunic sleeve, anxiously, as he peered up at his companion, eyebrows drawn together under pale curls. “Yes, Gabriel was in touch this morning. He seemed terribly excited about the whole thing. Apparently, Heaven has already begun amassing holy weaponry in preparation.” He swallowed. “I had hoped…” he glanced discreetly at Crowley, from under his lashes, before turning eyes back down to the hands he was now wringing in his lap. “I thought there would be more time.”</p><p>Crowley, by contrast, was wearing black, as he always did. His clothing was painstakingly modern and fashionable, and tight in every place he fancied he might like it to be, despite the fact that it, too, appeared to consist of a set of robes. He had on a pair of dark glasses that made it impossible to see his eyes, but one could still feel the weight of their gaze piercing you. His hair was a mess of curly red spikes, artfully dishevelled. At one temple, the sinuous shape of a snake curled discreetly next to an ear. One could almost convince oneself that it was a tattoo, except that, every so often, when seen from the corner of one’s eye, it would appear to move ever so slightly.</p><p>Crowley, who had changed his name from Crawly to Crowley several millennia ago (5), felt the weight of the impending deadline press down on him again. “Yeah. Yeah, me too. Of all the things I expected Hastur and Ligur to have waiting for me at that meeting, the antichrist in a basket wasn’t on the list.”</p><p>“I suppose there wasn’t anything you could have done?” Aziraphale asked, already knowing the answer.</p><p>“Done? Done what, exactly? I couldn’t not deliver her; they were watching for the switch to happen. The baby was to end up in the care of the Senator and his wife, and so she did. There’d have been hell to pay, otherwise.”</p><p>“It seems a shame that there wasn’t a way to just… make the baby quietly disappear.”</p><p>Crowley stared at Aziraphale. “I’m not going to hurt a baby, antichrist or no. I’m not that kind of demon. Besides, Hell would notice if she popped up down there again. They’d just send another one up here, as quick as you like. It’d hardly buy the galaxy any time at all.”</p><p>“Oh, gracious! I didn’t mean that you should have killed the child!” the angel protested, perhaps not entirely truthfully. The thought had crossed his mind that it might be easier, and to the good of the entire galaxy, had the baby had an unfortunate accident. But only in passing! He wouldn’t wish harm on any being, even the spawn of Satan. “I meant, could you perhaps have had her discreetly adopted by someone else?”</p><p>“What, so that she could grow up away from the corrupting influences of money and galactic politics? She’ll still come into her powers when she turns eleven. Heaven and Hell’d still be beating their war drums and rattling their sabers. Besides, Hell would notice if we swapped the antichrist with some other ordinary human baby. No one could ever mistake a normal baby for Satan’s daughter! No, it wouldn’t work.” </p><p>Still, something about the idea stuck in Crowley’s mind, quietly turning itself over and over. Not fostering the child out -- someone would surely notice -- but providing the child with good influences, in addition to the corrupting ones, so that the two might cancel each other out… But the thought wouldn’t quite gel, and Aziraphale was looking ready to chew on his immaculately manicured nails. The sight of the angel in such visible distress made Crowley want to fight something, or curl up around Aziraphale until he felt better. He felt desperation clawing at his insides again. Eleven years wasn’t enough. Eleven years would never be enough. This required a change of scenery, and a liberal application of alcohol.</p><p>“Come on, angel. If the world’s ending, I don’t want to be sober for it.”</p><p>***</p><p>In the theatre district of Aldera City, on Alderaan, in the backroom of a dusty bookshop, was a plush velvet settee. Crowley was currently sprawled across its faded tartan upholstery, a wineglass perilously near to slipping from his inebriated fingertips. His black obi was slightly crooked, and he’d abandoned both his black gloves and his sunglasses some time after his fourth glass of wine.</p><p>Aziraphale slouched at his desk chair, contemplating his glass of white, trying to decide whether it could use a top-up. “So, what exactly is your point?” He asked Crowley, blearily. He managed to wobbily pour the wine into his glass on his second attempt.</p><p>Crowley’s free hand waved aimlessly through the air for a moment, as though he were attempting to pluck a point from the ether. “My point is,” he said firmly, waiting for it to produce itself. “My point is, dolphins. That’s my point.” Crowley was quite proud of having relocated it. “Big brains, size of -- size of -- damn big brains. Not to mention the whales. Brain city, whales!”</p><p>Aziraphale slumped a bit further into his chair, looking as though he was attempting to disappear into the folds of his beige robe. “Kraken,” he interjected, mind still on the grim reality of the coming Armageddon, though the wine made the whole thing seem more distant and fuzzy. “Great big bugger, supposed to rise to the surface, right up at the end when the sea boils.” He frowned. “Never did say which sea. Lots of planets have seas. Some planets are <em> all </em>sea. Mon Cala, Kamino--”</p><p>Crowley leaned forward intently, his yellow eyes almost feverishly bright. “That’s my point! Whole sea bubbling, what about the dolphins, the whales, and won’t anybody think about the Mon Calamari? What are they supposed to do when the whole sea’s turned into a great big deathtrap, and everything’s turning into--” Crowley and Aziraphale tried for a moment to get their inebriated lips to form the phonemes required to pronounce bouillabaisse, before giving up entirely. “--fish stew! It’s all well and good for Nautolans or Quarrans, but what did the dolphins have to do with any of it? Have they got free will? Didn’t tempt any goldfish into eating apples, did I? They’re just unlucky enough to share the galaxy with the rest of us, who are going to turn into a cinder!”</p><p>“All creatures, great and small.” Aziraphale clutched his wineglass, and looked miserable.</p><p>Crowley leaped up from the settee, suddenly filled with vicious nervous energy. “Do you know what’s worse? When it’s all over, you’ve got to deal with <em> eternity!” </em>He drew the last word out into a wail, and Aziraphale winced, his foggy head pounding.</p><p>“Eternity?”</p><p>Crowley smiled viciously. “Oh, it won’t be so bad, at first.” He plucked up a musical program from a pile of ephemera. “Although no Petraxian symphonies or revivals of Dembaline’s famed <em> Shwock Dubllon </em> in eternity, I’m afraid.” Aziraphale looked stricken. Crowley decided to twist the knife just a bit, for good measure. “Although, I have heard rumors that your boss really loves the Leisurenauts <em> .” </em> Aziraphale looked a bit green, contemplating a future of nothing but the blandly saccharine lift music of the all-protocol droid band. “I mean do you know what eternity is?” Crowley waved his hands expansively, having deposited the program back on the stack of paper. There’s this big mountain at the end of the universe, and every thousand years, there’s a little bird--”</p><p>“What little bird,” Aziraphale asked suspiciously. He was always a bit suspicious of little birds, as they tended to tell secrets one wanted kept, such as thousands of years of friendship and trading work assignments with a demon. </p><p>“This little bird I’m talking about,” said Crowley, desperately trying to get his pickled mind to focus. He was going somewhere with this. “Every thousand years--”</p><p>“The same bird, every thousand years?”</p><p>Aziraphale could be frustratingly literal-minded. “Yeah,” Crowley determined, after a pause.</p><p>“Bloody ancient bird, then,” the angel scoffed.</p><p>“Every thousand years, this bird flies to the mountain and sharpens its beak--”</p><p>“Hold on,” Aziraphale interjected, “You can’t do that. Between here and the end of the universe, there’s loads of -- of bugger all.” The angel waved a hand, as if to encompass star systems, asteroid belt, rathtars, summa-verminoth, and black holes.</p><p>“It gets there anyway,” Crowley insisted.</p><p>“Must have a very good spaceship,” Aziraphale notes, thoughtfully.</p><p>“Yeah. If you like. Anyway, this bird sharpens its beak on the mountain, and then it flies back, and after a thousand years, it goes and does it again.”</p><p>They both thought about this.</p><p>“Seems a lot of effort to go to, just to sharpen a beak,” Aziraphale decided.</p><p>“Listen, the point is that when the bird has worn the mountain down to nothing, then you still won’t have finished listening to <em> The Sequential Passage of Chronological Intervals </em>.”</p><p>This was a horror that didn’t bear contemplation.</p><p>“I don’t like it anymore than you do,” Aziraphale protested, “but I told you, I can’t not do what I’m told. I’m an angel, I can’t-- I can’t cope with this while I’m drunk,” he determined, running a hand over his face. He sobered up, with a grimace, the Alderaanian ice-wine leaving his bloodstream abruptly. Crowley grimaced, and followed suit, trying to get rid of the fuzzy feeling that sobering up via miracle left on his tongue. </p><p>Aziraphale straightened himself up, regarding Crowley seriously. “Even if I wanted to help, I couldn’t,” he told him. He felt simultaneously anxious over the possibility that Crowley might succeed in this attempt to talk him around, and anxious that Crowley might not succeed, and Aziraphale would have to resign himself accepting the end of everything that he loved. “I can’t interfere with the Divine Plan.”</p><p>“What about diabolical plans?” Crowley asked leaning forward towards Aziraphale. “You can’t be certain that thwarting me isn’t part of the Divine Plan, too. I mean, you’re supposed to thwart the wiles of the Evil One, at every turn, aren’t you?”</p><p>Aziraphale hesitated, “Well--”</p><p>“You see a wile, you thwart, am I right?”</p><p>Aziraphale, feeling every inch of his painful sobriety, thought this over carefully, and then proceeded to do so, again. Crowley wasn’t wrong, but this felt terribly like a temptation. Or an answer to Aziraphale’s prayers. “Broadly. Actually, I encourage mortals to do the actual--”</p><p>Crowley cut him off, continuing to underline his point. “The antichrist has been born, but it’s the upbringing that’s important, the influences. The evil influences,” Crowley gestured to his sleek black robes, his venom-yellow eyes, the slim cylindrical metal hilt clipped at his waist, “that’s all going to be me. It’d be too bad if someone made sure that I failed.” His voice was gentle, coaxing. Aziraphale felt hope bloom, fragile as the first new leaf of spring, in his heart. </p><p>“Heaven couldn’t actually object, if I was thwarting you,” Aziraphale murmured, as if hardly daring to voice the wonderful idea aloud, his excitement slowly growing.</p><p>Crowley swayed a bit, in place, watching his friend intently. “No. It’d be a real feather in your wing. We’d be godfathers, sort of, overseeing her upbringing. We do it right, she won’t be evil. Or good. Just normal. ” He smiled, seeing Aziraphale jaw firm, as the angel came to a decision.</p><p>They shook on it.</p><p>***</p><p>The Holdo household wasn’t sure quite what to make of the new nanny and gardener. The senatorial residence was sprawling, and had a fairly large staff, because the senator and his wife had little time or attention for its upkeep. Madam Holdo had initially been reluctant to take on a nanny, excited by all the bonding opportunities of spending time with her infant daughter. However, the political demands on the time of a senator’s wife made it a necessity. There had been a line of qualified applicants outside the Holdo residence the morning that Madam Holdo had made the job available, but somehow Nanny Ashtoreth was the only person to actually <em> arrive </em> at the interview room. (7) </p><p>Nanny Ashtoreth dressed like she was ready to attend a funeral at a moment’s notice, in a hat, kitten heels, and modest black lace and brocade skirt suits, her red hair pinned up in neat curls. She had an umbrella with a handle that didn’t quite match, a gleaming sleek metal cylinder with hints of ominous circuitry, and a red ignition switch. No one ever worked up the nerve to ask her about it. Her mouth was set in a stern line, and her eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, which made her expressions particularly hard to read. Sometimes, there was a flash of bright color behind the dark glass, and the onlooker was forced to wonder whether Ashtoreth had eyes that glowed like fire. The people who met her could never quite decide whether they found the overall effect sexy, or terrifying.</p><p>Nanny Ashtoreth read little Amilyn horror stories, before tucking her neatly into bed for the night, assuring her that Amilyn needn’t fear monsters under the bed or mynocks in the closet, because Amilyn herself was far more terrifying than any of them.</p><p>Brother Francis had been the only applicant for the position of gardener, as well. (8) </p><p>Brother Francis was a tremendously sweet man, everyone who met him agreed, but they also found him spectacularly peculiar. He dressed and spoke like a parody from a distant idealized pastoral past, as conceived by a Coruscanti politician who had never actually <em> seen </em>a farmer. He had a heavy accent, bad teeth, dubious facial hair, and bushy eyebrows. His shapeless tunic looked like it had been made from sackcloth, and he wore a slightly squashed brown hat that looked like it might have been sat upon by a bantha. He almost never seemed to do any actual gardening, but strolled about the Holdo grounds and would chew idly on a bit of straw, when he noticed that other people were watching him. No one could quite decide if he were entirely real.</p><p>Brother Francis showed Amilyn, who liked to wander barefoot through the garden, rather than staying confined to the utilitarian Gatalentean-style home, all the living creatures that could be found in the gardens (as well as a number that really shouldn’t have been, given that they weren’t native to Coruscant). He pointed out crunchbugs, collipods, and gorgs, showing Amilyn all the ways that they were just as remarkable and beautiful as carrier butterflies, tooka, and fathiers. </p><p>While no one could have ever called Amilyn Holdo ordinary, the little girl was suspiciously normal for her age, even given her tendency to change her mind about which color she wanted her hair to be, from one day to the next. Ashtoreth and Francis began to cast worried looks at one another when they passed on the garden path, and exchange hushed whispers in darkened hallways of the Holdo house. Time crept onward towards the end of all things.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p>1) Hell, it turns out, had not been paying particularly close attention to the current political climate in the Galaxy. If they had been they might have targeted the newborn son of the soon to be Grand Moff of the Galactic empire. Having access to a big "boom" button could only have made the antichrist's job easier.</p><p>2) There really were a remarkable number of people having babies in the Polis Massa medical facility weren’t there? It’s almost like that was what the facility was intended for. Well, that and satanism.</p><p>3) Peculiarly, if anyone had been inclined to remember it, the exact same bookshop had previously been located on Naboo, on Jedha, on Corellia, and on Coruscant. It was as though the shop had been miraculously transported, in one neat piece, without so much as a misplaced brick, or creased scroll of forbidden Sith poetry. This is because the bookshop had previously existed in all of those places, at one time or another, and had been transported by angelic miracle.</p><p>4) Aziraphale cultivated the scent of mildew specifically for the purpose of repelling potential customers. In reality, mildew would not have <em> dared </em> touch a single volume on the premises.</p><p>5) Or, unfortunately for the eyes of the fashion-conscious, like fanny-packs.</p><p>6) Yes, Alderaan has ducks. As it happens, most civilized planets in the galaxy have ducks. Tatooine, notably, does not.</p><p>7) Who wanted to be constantly reminded by their coworkers that their natural state was crawling on the ground? Not Crowley. Hastur had a particular sneering way of saying “Crawly” that had made him feel very small, and angry. The “Anthony J.” portion of his name, which he mostly used on what paperwork he couldn’t avoid or miracle away, or when in conversation with the sort of pompous mortals who thought less of a being with only one name, was a more recent addition. He still hadn’t decided what the J. stood for.</p><p>8) Best not to ask what happened to the others. Localized weather patterns and mishaps with speeder engines can be so unfortunate, sometimes.</p><p>9) In this case, there had been no line of qualified applicants, because anyone who had considered applying for the post had found, to their delight, that they had won a share of the winnings in the Coruscanti Quarterly Jackpot Lottery and need never work again (whether they had bought a ticket, or not!)). </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Eleven</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Luke Skywalker was turning eleven in a few days. He was quite excited at the prospect of having the day off from chores so that he could go play with his best friend, Biggs, who was also turning eleven that day. He did not want a droid for his birthday, though Aunt Beru had stated that they really could use one around the farmstead, especially one that could help with the schoolwork he missed during the demanding harvest season (and it would be just like his aunt and uncle to get him a “practical” gift), but he longed with every fiber of his nearly-eleven year old heart for a T-16 Skyhopper, or, at least something that could fuel his dreams of adventure and escape. He hated Tatooine, a planet upon which nothing interesting ever happened, at least not to ten year old moisture farmers, but loved flying passionately. He and Biggs would race their speeders along the desert canyons, and discuss with fascination any ships they saw flying overhead, on the way to or from Mos Eisley spaceport. Biggs had a plan to apply for the Imperial flight academy the moment that he was old enough, and Luke was desperately jealous. He was very certain his uncle would never let him leave this terrible ball of dust and heat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In all respects, he seemed to be a perfectly ordinary boy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That, of course, couldn’t have been farther from the truth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Princess Leia Organa was turning eleven in a few days. She was quite excited at the prospect of being able to have a joint birthday party with her friend Amilyn, who shared Leia’s birthdate. She was a bit disappointed that she would be having the party on Coruscant, where she and Amilyn were part of the Apprentice Legislature program, and not on Alderaan, but at least her father would be there. Amilyn’s would not be, but then, he never was. Leia was quite certain that she was going to receive a droid for her birthday, and was looking forward to befriending it. She hoped it would be an adventurous one, the sort of droid she could get into scrapes with. She loved Alderaan, which she privately thought was the most beautiful planet in the galaxy, with its snow-capped mountains, frozen lakes, and lush forests. There were so many places for an adventurous girl to have fun, even when she was mostly restricted to the grounds of the royal palace. She particularly enjoyed climbing trees, and nicking the royal guards’ blasters for a bit of target practice in the forest. She could hit a stone placed on a tree branch from a distance that was uncanny. But she was stuck on Coruscant for the time being, biding her time until she was able to secure a position in which she hoped to do some good for the Rebel Alliance. She knew her parents worried about her dedication to the cause; she was only ten, and they wanted her to have a normal, happy childhood, regardless of their own work with the Rebellion. But Leia was determined to help people, as soon as she possibly could.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In all respects, she seemed to be a perfectly ordinary girl (for a princess).</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That, of course, couldn’t have been farther from the truth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“A hellhound?” Aziraphale asked, incredulously. “And it didn’t occur to you to mention this before?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Amilyn’s party was exceptionally well attended, the children of various delegates, senators, lobbyists, and hangers-on flocking to the event, whether they were actually friends with the Holdos’ daughter, or not. Amilyn did have many friends of her own, she was easy-going and personable, but her friends weren’t just children of people of consequence, much to her father’s dismay. Amilyn was just as likely to make a bosom friend of the child of a postal delivery worker, as the child of Core-world royalty. However, her very best friend in the entire galaxy was Leia Organa, who happened to share her birthday.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia and Amilyn shared a mutual eye-rolling disgust for the nonsensical pomp and circumstance of the party intended for an eleven year old child. Amilyn was relieved that Leia was stuck on Coruscant for the occasion, and thus was sharing the party with her. Leia would have preferred to be home on Alderaan with her parents for her birthday, but was determined to make the best of her circumstances. At the first opportunity, she and Amilyn snuck away from the hoard of spoiled brats to sit in the kitchen and watch the waiters set out food for the party, trays and trays of disappointingly fussy canapes. One of waitstaff, a humanoid being in dark glasses, with red hair, seemed to mostly be rearranging the silver trays of crepes over and over, rather than doing anything useful. The cake, at least, was satisfyingly enormous. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What do you think your parents will get you for your birthday?” Leia asked Amilyn, dipping a fingertip into the purple icing. Amilyn, whose hair color currently matched the cake’s sugary decorations, which were a violent shade of plum, shrugged. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Who knows? My mother has been very keen on organic and sustainable crystal gardens, this week. So, it might be a lovely potted bit of chrysopraz. Then again, you know how she is. For all I know, she’s moved on to cheese-making, and will get me raw handcrafted bantha milk cheese that she cultured herself.” Amilyn shrugged. She didn’t really mind her mother’s flighty focus on whatever brief shiny cause, pastime, or person had caught her interest, but she did sometimes wish that her mother might save up a bit of focus for her, before getting carried away with some new trend. Amilyn might change her hair color on the regular, but she considered herself rather steadfast, by comparison. “Whatever it is, she’ll think it’s very useful, but it’ll be a bit boring.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia nodded sagely, licking the icing off of her finger. “I think I’ll get a droid this year,” she said. “Or, that’s what I’d like, anyway.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But you already have droids around the palace on Alderaan, don’t you?” Amilyn asked. “Why would you want another?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia frowned. “I want the sort of droid I could have adventures with, not the kind that will scold me for getting mud on my dress. A droid that’s not for palace protocol, or for etiquette and grammar lessons. The sort that could pick a lock, or navigate a starship, or get into a bit of trouble. A droid that wouldn’t mind some mud.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Amilyn frowned. “Do you really think that your parents will get you a droid like that?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s my birthday,” Leia said. “Why not? I can hope.” She stole a lavender rose off of the cake, devouring it neatly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale, decked out in a white top hat and tailcoat, as well as a messily penciled-on moustache, plucked a long-eared and rather irritated-looking green creature from the silk top hat. “What’s this? It’s our old friend, Harry the rabbit!” he exclaimed. Rather than being greeted by riotous applause, the crowd of children stared vacantly back.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What’s a rabbit?” one of them asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At the back of the room, Crowley fought the urge to cover his face with his hands in despair. It was rather like a speeder crash, though; you couldn’t look away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This is stupid,” a Pantoran girl with dark blue hair pulled into pigtails adorned with garish pink bows said. There were restless murmurs of agreement from the crowd of children. “At </span>
  <em>
    <span>my </span>
  </em>
  <span>birthday party, we had a troop of Twilek acrobats, a trained loth-wolf, and an anti-gravity bouncy castle.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley thought it was a shame that the loth-wolf hadn’t eaten her. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia turned around from where she was seated to frown scathingly at the girl, as Aziraphale dithered anxiously on the makeshift stage, some of the glittery bunting beginning to come loose from around the edge to droop sadly. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, no,” Amilyn placated, “really, this is great! Very… old-fashioned.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Boo! It’s dumb!” Another child yelled.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re dumb!” Leia snapped. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Events were rather a blur after that, but somehow it devolved into hair-pulling, biting, and shrieking, as the various bodyguards of all these diplomatic and royal offspring tried and failed to break up the chaos. Ultimately, a little Ithorian wound up holding a stormtrooper’s blaster, as the white-armored soldier stared in stupefaction down its barrel. Aziraphale performed a very quick miracle, and the gobsmacked stormtrooper, rather than getting a face full of deadly blasterfire, found himself covered in a cloud of pink glitter, instead.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia and Amilyn cheered. </span>
  <em>
    <span>This was the best birthday party ever!</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Slinking out from the sulphurous pits of hell, a massive demonic hound was seeking its master, the Destroyer of Worlds, Great Beast That is Called Dragon, etc., etc. It raised its heavy muzzle to the air, trying to catch the infernal scent, and then froze in confusion.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The hellhound stood there for a moment, pulled forcefully in two different directions, as if two blackholes were exerting inexorable force on either side of it. It felt its every fiber pulled and stretched, until it began to unravel, tearing clean in half, with a sound like ripping fabric (1). Abruptly, where there had once been one massive hellhound, there now stood two dogs instead. One half of the hellhound felt adventurous, brave, and suddenly knew a great deal about the operation and repair of a variety of one-man fighter spacecrafts. The other half of the hellhound found itself suddenly anxious, profoundly concerned by proper decorum and the galaxy’s lack of interest in it, and in possession of a sudden fluency in six million forms of communication. As they set out in two seperate directions, unceasing in their pursuit, their matted coats of black fur began to take on a peculiarly metallic sheen, and their eyes, once alight with the fires of hell, now shone like blinking bits of glass and wire.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley stared at his chrono, anxiously. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Three, two, one…</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He waited. And waited, craning his head around, searching for any sign of the approaching demonic hound. Any moment now, he expected to hear its snarling, as it bared its crooked scimitar-like teeth, its fetid breath wafting forth, reeking of sulfur…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nothing happened.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale, who had fled the stage, pursued by small children armed with weapons that fired clouds of sparkling glitter in a rainbow of colors, was waiting for him when he got back to his speeder. They both clambered into its shiny black leather-lined interior, which featured a variety of flashing lights and important-looking buttons, that actually served no function at all, except to exist because Crowley thought that this was how a properly first-class speeder ought to look. Emblazoned upon its shiny black side in silver aurebesh characters was the name, “Bentley.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The two preternatural entities stared at each other in silence for a moment, processing the implications of what had just happened. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No dog,” Aziraphale said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Wrong child.”</span>
  </em>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>The weight of it fell like a stone between them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They’d known that the world was coming to an end for eleven years, but in that moment, they felt it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Inside the palatial building, now a mess of sparkling glitter, purple icing, and screaming stormtroopers, a little silver and blue astromech rolled into view, careless of the fact that it rolled right over a hapless trooper’s foot, chirping happily. Leia Organa settled her glitter blaster onto her hip, patting its round dome.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Meanwhile, on Tatooine…</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Luke and Biggs had retreated to Beggar’s Canyon, each of them with a slice of Aunt Beru’s cake in hand. The cake was a rare treat reserved for birthdays, but it only sweetened Luke’s mood slightly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Biggs poked him in the shoulder. “Come on, eat your cake and cheer up. You said your uncle was going to get you a droid, didn’t you? So, this can’t be a surprise.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Luke shrugged. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I just sort of hoped for something a bit more exciting, I suppose. I wanted a droid that’s been </span>
  <em>
    <span>off </span>
  </em>
  <span>this wretched dustball.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Biggs considered this. The prim golden droid seemed utterly at odds with the surroundings of a moisture farm, and practical, hard-working moisture farmers like Owen and Beru. He’d be even more out of place in the hardscrabble poverty and crime of the Mos Eisley or Mos Espa spaceports. Biggs winced a bit, imagining the protocol droid trying to hold a conversation with a smuggler, or one of Jabba’s enforcers. It wouldn’t end well. “Maybe he </span>
  <em>
    <span>has</span>
  </em>
  <span> been off Tatooine,” he suggested to Luke. “I mean, I can’t really imagine someone from this planet having much use for a droid like that. I know your uncle wants him to help translate binary, but I think even the water vaporators looked bewildered when he tried to tell them about the annual evaporation festival on Manaan…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Luke laughed, despite himself, and took a bite of the cake, savoring the faintly spicy sweetness of it. “Maybe you’re right. Poor Threepio! Imagine if he’d been stuck on that Jawa sandcrawler much longer. He looked so offended by their manners…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Biggs, having devoured the last crumb of his cake, tossed a pebble into the canyon, watching it bounce down the perilous red stone sides. He waited Luke out, knowing by the wistful look on his friend's face that Luke hadn’t told him everything yet.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I guess…” Luke wavered for a moment, looking chagrined. “I know it’s stupid of me, Biggs, really I do, but I wanted it to be a droid who’d been to space, who’d seen things-- battles, adventures, other worlds.” Luke sighed. “Lots of space ships have protocol droids aboard, right?” Luke hesitated, struggling with himself. He knew Biggs was his best friend, that Luke could say anything to Biggs, and it would be fine, but this was definitely the sort of daydream that Fixer, Camie, and the other kids would have mocked him for. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Even spice freighters carry protocol droids sometimes.” Luke bit his lip. “I guess, what I really wanted, more than anything, was a droid who’d met my father, who he’d worked on and fixed up. Who was connected to Anakin Skywalker, really </span>
  <em>
    <span>connected</span>
  </em>
  <span> to him.” He hung his head. “I know it’s stupid.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Biggs put a hand on his shoulder, his eyebrows creasing slightly into a frown. “I don’t think that’s stupid, Luke.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On the Lars Farm, some few miles away, C-3P0, a hellhound with the shape and memory of a protocol droid, the unwilling veteran of many battles and skirmishes during the Clone Wars, built by Anakin Skywalker, was trying to convince a moisture vaporator of the importance of carrying a silken handkerchief while attending a Pantoran ball. The moisture vaporator remained unconvinced. (2)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Be careful what you wish for, kids. You just might get it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>1) <span>Indeed, it was ripping fabric; it was the very fabric of reality tearing itself apart, in response to the will of two antichrists. </span></p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <span>2) This was perhaps because the vaporator had no notion of what a silken handkerchief was.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Jedi and Sith</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The Great Jedi Library on Ossus had been a center of learning and philosophical discussion for generations. It had grown from a humble mud-brick structure to a massive city-like labyrinth of archives, reading rooms, classrooms, and vaults, its golden-capped spires, reached upwards, as if to pierce the planet’s atmosphere.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Aziraphale had spent many happy years here, poring over moldering scrolls, and making copies and translations from ancient texts, while holocrons shed faint glimmers of light from cobwebbed shelves around him. (1)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>There were faint rustles of noise as Jedi librarians sorted materials back onto the proper shelves, and Aziraphale could distantly hear a burst of excited chatter as several young Jedi apprentices were released from a classroom several doors down, into the hallway.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>No one took any particular notice of Aziraphale, reading glasses perched delicately on his nose, his worn tan-colored cloak folded neatly over the back of his chair, the loose sleeves of his beige tunic pooling around his elbows as he carefully unrolled a particularly fragile scroll with carefully gloved hands. The vivid colors of the illuminated script glimmered slightly in the faint shafts of sunlight from the high windows above. A mug of tea rested further down the table, steam misting the air above it. (2)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>In every respect, Aziraphale looked as though he belonged in a Jedi library. In every respect, from his beige robes, to his serenely contemplative expression, to the modest and serviceable empty metal hilt that was clipped at his belt, Aziraphale looked like a Jedi. He wasn’t, of course, but it was ever so convenient to give that general impression to the galaxy at large. (3)</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The fortress on Almas was carved out of light-devouring volcanic stone and cold Mandalorian iron, and it loomed. It loomed more intimidatingly than it should have been possible for any building to loom, dark and implacable as its shape disappeared into the storm-struck sky. Lightning flashed for a moment, revealing the thin slits of windows in the side of its impenetrable towers. Only one of these windows was lit. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It caught lovely afternoon sun, in fact, and was perfect for the cultivation of houseplants.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Inside the dark fortress of the Sith, its dreaded Lord, Crowley, was mid-tirade, every inch of him, from his red curls to his snakeskin boots (Were they boots? No one had ever dared to ask.), radiating contained fury. “I have given you so </span>
  </em>
  <span>many </span>
  <em>
    <span>chances,” he hissed. “I told you, didn’t I, what would happen if you failed me. I told you that I would only accept the best, the strongest, the real </span>
  </em>
  <span>winners!</span>
  <em>
    <span> And this is how you repay me? It’ll be the lava pits, for you!”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Outside the door, the Sith acolyte listening at the door quaked in awe-struck terror and hero-worship. No wonder he had never seen Lord Crowley with an apprentice before. Clearly, the Sith must discard them quickly and violently, when they failed him! He was the most ruthless Sith Lord to ever occupy the fortress. (4)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>In every respect, Crowley looked as though he belonged in a Sith fortress. In every respect, from his black and red robes, to his Sith-yellow eyes, to the sleek and dangerous-looking metal hilt that was clipped at his belt, Crowley looked like a Sith. He wasn’t, of course, but it was ever so convenient to give that general impression to the galaxy at large. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>As the acolyte at the door quickly snuck away to tell the other disciples of darkness about Crowley’s latest atrocity against some hapless Sith apprentice, Crowley, utterly oblivious, continued to shake his finger in outrage at a wilted philodendron.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>***</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema Device bent low over her speeder-bike, fondly nicknamed <em>Phaeton</em>. She narrowed her eyes behind her biker’s goggles against the cold wind. She could hear the outraged shouts of the Biker Scouts behind her, as she whipped sharply around a corner. Her heart pounded in terror, in her chest, but she felt utterly confident that, as insane as it was for her to have broken into the secure Imperial Records Archive on Coruscant itself, seat of Imperial power, she wasn’t going to be caught here. It wasn’t false confidence. Anathema knew because she’d read it in a book.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The very first sentence Anathema had ever read had been from the book, and it had shaped the course and purpose of her life. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>Four shalle ryde and three sharl ryde the Skye as two, and Wonne shal ryde in flames; and theyr shall be no stopping themme: not fish, nor rayne, neither Deville or Angel. And ye shalle be theyr also, Anathema." </span>
  </em>
  <span>The book had guided every step of Anathema’s life, for as long as she had been living it, as it had guided her mother’s, and her mother’s mother’s, and so on, right back to Agnes Nutter. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Agnes Nutter had been a witch. Not a Jedi, not a Sith. A witch. By being a witch, rather than falling neatly onto one side or another of the conflict between the light and dark sides of the Force, Agnes Nutter had managed to earn the animosity of both sides of the conflict. She had frightened both factions, thoroughly, because Agnes Nutter was something </span>
  <em>
    <span>new.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Something that they didn’t understand. They’d reacted the way that people tended to react to something they feared, and didn’t understand. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Violently.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Witchfinder Major Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer had been summoned to the planet upon which Agnes made a modest living, preparing medicines and giving advice to the people around her. They regarded her as very strange; she advocated against the consolidation of power by the Chancellor of the Republic, and warned against the disenfranchisement of Outer Rim planets. She dared to suggest that droids had feelings! To think of it! Pulsifer’s interrogation was over quickly (5), as Agnes Nutter quite readily confessed to being a witch, and cooperated very agreeable with the people who wanted to burn her to death. As it turned out, this was because Agnes, an early advocate of dresses having pockets, had stuffed hers full of thermal detonators. She took all of her executioners with her, in a tremendous explosion. It was the last witch burning in the galaxy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The truly remarkable thing about Agnes Nutter, though, was what she left behind for her descendants. Agnes had written a book of prophecies, which was unique in the galaxy, not just because only one copy existed, but also because it was the only book of prophecies to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>entirely true.</span>
  </em>
  <span> She had been able to use her connection to the Force to peer forward through time into the future, along the unbroken line of her descendants. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Agnes Nutter’s book had made the fortune of Anathema’s family. It had also made it very clear that that good fortune was about to come to an end, along with the rest of the universe, and that Anathema was going to be right there on the frontlines of the coming apocalypse.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That was what had brought her to Coruscant, the last place a notorious member of the Rebel Alliance should have been, to sneak into a highly guarded facility to look up any records of disasters, strange occurrences, and unusual births on the planet Alderaan. Agnes had been fairly clear that Alderaan would be central to the coming Armageddon, and that the key to finding the antichrist was Alderaan. (6) </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema had succeeded in her task, having tricked the staff of the archive with false credentials and made a copy of the records that she needed. There was no telling whether the datastick that she carried held answers, but she intended to take it with her to Alderaan, sort through the records and follow up on leads. If she was lucky, one of those leads would take her straight to the antichrist.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On the way out of the facility, though, a pair of Scout Troopers, who had been idly writing a citation for an antique speeder with gleaming black sides that was parked illegally outside of the Imperial Records building, had spotted </span>
  <em>
    <span>Phaeton</span>
  </em>
  <span> and run her bike’s ident number. And found that it belonged to a notorious Rebel terrorist.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Which was how she had wound up in a high speed chase through the chaotic and noisy streets of Coruscant. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema glanced over her shoulder, her long black hair whipping wildly behind her. No sign of the Troopers. Had she managed to lose them after that last hairpin turn? She gritted her teeth, and opened the throttle just a little bit more, twisting the bike to howl sideways along the side of a tower, turning again, this time into a wider street. A vendor with an oversized freight craft shrieked, as the wake of her bike’s momentum rocked his cargo spilling meiloorun fruits towards the distant undercity, far below. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Phaeton </span>
  </em>
  <span>rattled under Anathema, bucking her control, and she fought to steady the speeder bike, all of her attention on the fight with gravity.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The world dissolved into a shock of pain and movement, as </span>
  <em>
    <span>Phaeton</span>
  </em>
  <span> and something very large, very shiny, and very black collided.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema lost a bit of time, after that. She was aware of a very bright light in her eyes, that vanished swiftly as she mumbled about its appearance. Her head was throbbing, and so was her arm, though that pain abruptly lessened, as the being talking to her helped her to her feet. There were two of them, both male-presenting humanoid in shape. Anathema staggered and leaned a bit further against the blonde one, who was supporting her. He was wearing a lot of beige, and looked a bit like a librarian or the sort of professor who preferred reading to managing a class of unruly undergraduates. There was something peculiar about the way he was dressed, like something out of a book she’d read once, Anathema registered, but she couldn’t quite place it. It wasn’t just that his clothing looked like it might be a few centuries old, it was something specific. She couldn’t pinpoint it, and it made her head pound to try.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The other man was preoccupied with his airspeeder, checking it over carefully for any damage, running his hands carefully over its gleaming black sides. He was very odd, as well, Anathema thought. For one thing, he had on dark glasses, even though the alley they were in was deep in the shadows of the Coruscanti skyscrapers around them. How could he see anything? Anathema supposed it was no wonder that he’d hit her with his speeder. He radiated menace in a very general and unspecific way, as if it were simply a default way he chose to present himself to the universe. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I have a blaster,” Anathema lied, woozily.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you?” Crowley asked distractedly. “Good for you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley and Aziraphale, upon discovering that Amilyn Holdo was not the antichrist had gone to Polis Massa’s hospital facility. Crowley had remembered that there had been several other people on the asteroid that day, and it had occurred to the angel and the demon that it was just possible that the satanic medi-droids had sent Satan’s baby home with some unsuspecting new parent. They had gone to the asteroid to try to recover records of what other babies had been born there, that day.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Unfortunately, a certain Dark Lord of the Sith, had, upon learning of the death of his pregnant, had a temper tantrum in vicinity of the asteroid, and it had been reduced to a heap of smoldering rubble in the crossfire, leaving all records as so much ash and dust. Aziraphale had then suggested that the Imperial Records Archive on Coruscant was their next best option. Birth records had to be copied to the Imperial database, in order to ensure galactic citizenship. Crowley hadn’t fancied sorting through trillions upon trillions of pieces of paperwork, but as Aziraphale had pointed out, the demon hadn’t had any better ideas. Aziraphale, who had been sorting through archives for thousands of years, had soon determined that the Imperial Records Archive did not actually contain duplicates of Polis Massa’s birth records, and the two supernatural beings had come away from their search frustrated and increasingly desperate. They had just begun to talk about possible next steps when Anathema cartwheeled off her speeder bike, and across the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Bentley</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My bike,” Anathema was groaning, from where she was sprawled across the antigrav platform the Bentley had swerved to park at, post-collision.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Very resilient, these old machines,” Aziraphale remarked cheerfully, miracleing up a tractor field to enfold the speeder bike within, ensuring that it would be towed along behind Crowley’s antique airspeeder. Crowley groaned in dismay. He took in Aziraphale’s infuriatingly serene (Crowley would have said smug) expression, and caved. “So, where are we taking you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The nearest spaceport,” Anathema determined, staring distractedly at </span>
  <em>
    <span>Phaeton.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Was that a </span>
  <em>
    <span>hyperdrive? </span>
  </em>
  <span>Her speeder definitely didn’t have a hyperdrive. </span>
  <em>
    <span>No </span>
  </em>
  <span>speeder had a hyperdrive.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema was pretty sure she had a concussion.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Music with a driving bass beat poured from the airspeeder’s speaker system. In the front of the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Bentley, </span>
  </em>
  <span>two of the largest auras Anathema had ever seen bled together at the edges, intertwining in wisps of shadowy red and bright opalescent blue, as their owners bickered fondly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On the floor of the speeder, there was a book.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newton Pulsifer sighed, looking down at his neatly pressed Imperial cadet uniform. It was dreadfully itchy in the hot Tatooine sun, and the expense of purchasing it for his time at the Academy now felt like a waste. He didn’t imagine, for a moment, that he would have made a particularly talented or remarkable officer. He wasn’t courageous, he had no real ambition or drive, and he probably would have wound up inventorying supplies or filling out paperwork on some unremarkable Imperial satellite, or a dusty outer rim spaceport like the one he was in right now. He was depressingly ordinary, and had no skills to his name. He could remember, when he attended school, the way that the teachers tended to forget his name. Most people did. He thought he might stand out a bit more, come across as quirky, if he shortened it to Newt. It hadn’t had quite the effect he’d hoped.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt’s first day in the Imperial Armed Forces had also been his last. He’d known, the moment that the stern CO had sat him in front of a terminal to log into the Academy database, that he was doomed. And, with a few keystrokes, Newt had sealed his fate, and washed out of the Academy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newton Pulsifer was utterly unremarkable in every respect but one: every piece of technology he laid his hands upon failed utterly and spectacularly. Just as an Ysalamiri generated a natural field around itself that dampened the Force, rendering a Jedi helpless, Newt generated a natural field that caused all electronics to do precisely the opposite of what they were meant to do. As a child, he had been fascinated by wiring, circuitry, and computers. He’d dreamed of someday programming droids, or building spacecraft navicomps. But, at age eleven, when he had tried to wire a comm system -- it had simply needed new batteries and a bit of solder where a wire had come loose, it should have been easy -- he had managed to jam every outgoing signal in the entire city. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>What was he supposed to do now? Newt wasn’t sure he could bear taking a shuttle back to his home planet, facing his mother only to tell her that he had failed to hold down yet another job. He looked forlornly down at the crate of belongings he stowed into the space behind the seat of his second-hand turquoise blue T-16. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dick Turpin, </span>
  </em>
  <span>it exclaimed on one wing in shaky orange aurebesh letters. Newt had painted them himself, and lived in hope that one day someone would ask him why. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dick Turpin</span>
  </em>
  <span> looked as though it was held together by glue, twine, and hope. It was such a sorry airspeeder that not even the Jawa would consider stealing it for parts. It was quite safe, even in the wretched hive of scum and villainy that was Mos Eisley spaceport.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Belongings secured, Newt wiped the sweat off his face with his sleeve, looking around desperately for either distraction, shade, or both.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was a peculiar grizzled old man in rumpled clothing across the street, leaning against the wall of a Cantina whose sign’s flaking paint read “Madame Tracy’s”. He was holding a sign that said: </span>
  <em>
    <span>Witches--Blight Crops/Cast the Evil Eye/Dance Naked (an abomination)/Worship the Devil--Have Too Many Nipples/Call Their Cats Funny Names. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He was yelling at any passerby foolish enough to glance in his direction. The residents of Mos Eisley seemed to take his ranting in stride. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Witches?” Newt asked, wandering closer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell’s eyes lit up, and he bared his teeth in a manic grin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Aziraphale stumbled a bit, as his boot stuck in the thick mud of the Dathomirian swamp. He grimaced, pulling it free with a terrible squelch, and shuddered pulling his thick sand-colored wool cloak a bit closer around him, against the encroaching chill of the mist. Somewhere in the dark forest, he could hear the distant howl of a hunting rancor.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Behind him, Jedi Knight Bey Deverre looked disconcerted, clutching his lightsaber-pike, and peering into the oppressive gloom of the red planet.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Hello?” Aziraphale called out, into the uncaring darkness. Bey Deverre jumped, and looked at Aziraphale as though he couldn’t decide whether he thought the other Jedi were incredibly brave, or an utter idiot. “I, Aziraphale, a Knight of the Jedi Order, am here to speak to the Black Knight.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Somewhere a strange bird screeched in warning. Aziraphale waited patiently. After a few beats, a scuttling figure appeared out of the mist, beckoning them forward with a taloned hand.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Oh,” Aziraphale perked up, hopefully. “I was hoping to, ah, meet with the Black Knight? The foul fiend of the Sith, wedded to darkness and destruction? Him?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The cultist nodded eagerly, and gibbered, beckoning them forward into the dark.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>There was a clank metal armor, a snap-hiss of a red lightsaber blade igniting, and another figure materialized out of the mist. “You have sought the Black Knight, foolish one,” hissed an ominous voice from beneath a dark helmet. “But you have found your death.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Aziraphale frowned, feeling a shock of frustrated recognition, that mixed confusingly with delight. Even through a voice modulator, he’d know that voice anywhere. “Is that you under there, Crawly?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“It’s Crowley, now,” said the demon, pulling the heavy Madolorian helmet off of his head. He turned the red saber off, and clipped it back on his belt. “I changed it.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“What the hell are you playing at?” Aziraphale demanded, putting his own saber away in a sharply annoyed movement. He was suddenly realizing why all his efforts at treaty-building, and peace and reconciliation, within this star system had been evaporating like so much water on Tatooine. Had Crowley been following him, and undoing all of Aziraphale’s work? Was that why this frustrating, miserable assignment was taking so much longer than it should? But no, Crowley looked genuinely surprised to see him.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“It’s alright, lads, I know him, he’s fine,” Crowley muttered to the uneasy cultists, who looked bewildered as to why their Dark Lord wasn’t dicing the Jedi into small pieces. It didn’t seem to reassure them. It didn’t reassure Bey Deverre, either, who was looking at Aziraphale in betrayed fury.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m here fomenting dissent and discord,” Crowley explained. “It’s been too peaceful and harmonious, what with the establishment of a unified Galactic-wide Republic. So, I’m here, you know, fomenting. Got sent to stir up a bit of trouble.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Aziraphale huffed. “And I’m supposed to be here fomenting peace.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Crowley grimaced. “We’re both working very hard, in a miserable gloomy swamp, infested with super-intelligent rancors, and just cancelling each other out.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>His serpentine yellow eyes looked tired, Aziraphale thought. Such a cold, sunless swamp wasn’t agreeing with him. The angel could feel himself soften a bit, though the realization that weeks of work had been made pointless by Crowley’s own still made him want to throw things. He nodded. “It is a wretched place,” he conceded.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Crowley leaned in and murmured conspiratorially. “It’d be easier if we both stayed home, and just sent messages back to Heaven and Hell saying we’d done the work, wouldn’t it?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“That would be lying!”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Crowley squirmed. “The end result would be the same,” he wheedled. “We’d cancel each other out.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Aziraphale had to concede that that was true, but the thought of drawing the disapproval of Gabriel made him flinch.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“As long as they get the paperwork, head office is happy enough. They’re not going to check in, Aziraphale, they’ve got better things to do than verify compliance reports.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Aziraphale bit his lip. Crowley seemed so earnest, and they </span>
  </em>
  <span>were </span>
  <em>
    <span>just cancelling each other out, anyway… It wouldn’t be hurting anyone. He felt… tempted.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“No! No, we’re not having this conversation!” Aziraphale exclaimed.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Alright, alright,” Crowley shrugged, looking hurt. “Have it your way.” He shoved the helmet back on, throwing his hands up in exasperation, and turning away. Aziraphale watched the tenseness of his shoulders as he began to stride away, and thought about the long stretch of years since he had last seen the demon.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Crowley, wait.” Aziraphale’s voice was small. “Since-- Since we’re both just cancelling each other out, anyway, surely there’s no hurry to get back to it?” Deverre made a shocked and offended noise behind him, but Aziraphale ignored him. “I can’t say I think much of the local moonshine, but I’ve still got a bottle of plum wine from Naboo in my pack. Would you, that is, will you join me for a drink?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Aziraphale couldn’t see Crowley’s grin under the helmet, but he could hear it in his voice as he answered, “Angel, I thought you’d never ask.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Jedi Knight Bey Deverre beat a hasty retreat, marvelling at the ability of the Dark Side to seduce such seemingly upstanding Jedi as Aziraphale. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>***</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>1) <span>Aziraphale didn’t much care for holocrons--why resort to such crude modern means of imparting knowledge, when a book could serve the same purpose? Besides which, holocrons were noisy, and didn’t have that lovely scent of old paper.</span></p>
<p>
  <span>2) The mug was kept a careful distance from any texts that might be vulnerable to spillage, of course. Aziraphale wasn’t an amateur!</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>3) The Jedi had special access to all the best libraries, you see.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>4) In reality, the acolyte had no one to compare the current occupant of the Sith fortress to. Crowley was, in fact, the only person to take ownership of the fortress in recent memory. He’d stumbled upon it, and it's waiting staff of disciples, and decided that he liked the fortress’ sleek, minimalist lines. Also, the volcano-warmed stone was lovely to lounge on while  in snake-shape.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>5) “Art thou a Gray Jedi?” asked Pulsifer. Agnes drew herself up indignantly. “Do I look like someone’s precious self-insert Mary Sue to you? I’m a witch, Adultery Pulsifer, as surely as you’re a fool!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>6) At least, Anathema hoped that she was interpreting the prophecies correctly, in that regard. It certainly seemed to refer to Alderaan, but then there was that strange reference to <em>“twinned suns”</em> and <em>“a Star of Death that doethe shine darkely.”</em></span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Stowaways</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Shh, come on, while he’s in the Cantina!” Luke hissed to Biggs. His uncle had allowed him to go into town with the Darklighter family, on the condition that Luke be on his best behavior, and, above all, stay out of trouble. He’d also been insistent that they take C-3P0 with them, to get the droid out of his way.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Biggs had told him about seeing a bizarre make of T-16 Skyhopper parked in the alley next to Madame Tracy’s bar. “It’s the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen, Luke,” he’d insisted. “I don’t understand how something like that can even fly!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s a Skyhopper, though,” Luke had said dubiously. He had a model T-16 in his room, and his greatest ambition was to fly one himself someday. “Those are the best, and most maneuverable airspeeders on Tatooine.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, well.” Biggs had shrugged. “Not this one. Not even the Jawas would take it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Luke hadn’t believed him that the strange T-16 could really be that much of a lemon, so Biggs had offered to show him, if Luke could convince Owen to let him come into Mos Eisley.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Which was how they found themselves here, having snuck away from the Darklighters, in a dirty alley behind Madame Tracy’s, staring at the absolute ugliest speeder on any planet. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, Master Luke, I’m quite sure we shouldn’t be here,” C-3P0 worried. The droid disapproved of the entire adventure, but wouldn’t allow the two young boys to leave him behind. He had a profound dread that a Jawa might abscond with him to a sandcrawler. Luke thought even a Jawa would probably quickly tire of Threepio’s prattle and let the protocol droid go, if only to save its ears.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Luke continued to study the speeder. “Maybe it flies really well?” He mused after a moment, sounding rather doubtful of his own suggestion. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Biggs snorted. “Maybe.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Luke circled closer to the speeder. It was a vivid turquoise blue against the dingy alley, and looked profoundly out of place and twee in a place like Mos Eisley. “C’mon, let’s get a look at the controls, while the owner is in the Cantina with that old Witchfinder crank,” Luke told Biggs. “Bet he’ll be gone for a while.” Madame Tracy’s cantina was a popular drinking spot for a variety of clientele. Her jet juice and gammorean grog could make your hair curl (and then fall out, probably), she got the local bands to play sparkle-bop and tatooine blues on Tuesday nights, and she was known to offer intimate massage and light discipline for the discerning gentlebeing, by appointment. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was a burst of raucous laughter that floated from the cantina’s window into the alley below, just able to be heard over the off-key croon of a lounge singer, and the warbling of her accompanying band. Sounded like it was Gammorean opera, tonight. That poor pilot’s ears.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How are we supposed to get a look at the controls?” Biggs asked. “It’s not like it has an open top, like a repulsorlift.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Luke grinned. “Bet it’s unlocked. Didn’t you say that not even Jawas would want to take this hunk of junk?” Looking at it, Luke thought Biggs was right about that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Unlocked?” Threepio asked indignantly. “I hope you aren’t thinking of breaking into that ship, Master Luke.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t have to,” Luke told him with a fond smile.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They snuck closer to the vividly turquoise T-16. It had three stubby wings that looked like they might fall off, if someone breathed on them too hard. Threepio fluttered anxiously behind them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The T-16 was unlocked. It hadn’t been, when Newt went into Madame Tracy’s Cantina. Newt was a responsible sort of young man, who always locked up behind himself, whether he had anything worth stealing or not. Luke eagerly opened the T-16’s hatch, and peered up into it. “The leather interior is orange!” He called down in disbelief. “Come and see; it’s the ugliest thing in the galaxy!” He and Biggs scrambled inside. “C’mon, Threepio!” Luke hauled the droid up into the craft, as well. It was less of a tight squeeze than Luke had feared. It probably helped that two of them were small boys.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Dick Turpin </span>
  </em>
  <span>did not look any better on the inside than the outside. Biggs grimaced at the blocky steering mechanism that looked as though it had been designed for a creature with the limbs and stature of a kowakian-monkey lizard, rather than a human.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Luke was staring at the clippings pinned to the speeder’s walls. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Clone Trooper Zombie Army Invades Kamino!” </span>
  </em>
  <span>One proclaimed, while another said, </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Is the Emperor secretly a Hutt? Evidence You Need to See to Believe!” </span>
  </em>
  <span>He had known that the pilot of this thing must be nuts, and here was the proof, neatly clipped and pinned to the wall.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This thing’s a clunker, through and through, Luke,” Biggs said. “It’s genuinely the </span>
  <em>
    <span>worst </span>
  </em>
  <span>T-16 in all the galaxy. D’you think if you found another one this bad, your uncle might take pity on you, and let you have it? It’s got to be cheap, at last.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Luke scoffed. “Sounds about right. The only way Uncle Owen’ll ever give me a ship, is if he knows it’s such a piece of junk that I can’t use it to get out of Anchorhead.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Maybe you could rewire it,” Biggs suggested. “You’re pretty good with mechanics. C’mon let’s take a look under some of these panels.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They prised open one of the metal control panels, to reveal the bundles of cable beneath. On the wall above their heads, a clipping of flimsy read, </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Empire’s Secret Weapon? Star of DEATH!</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>***</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Deeper in the shadows of the Mos Eisley alleyway next to the raucous cantina, a figure in a worn brown cloak ducked out from behind a pile of refuse, wrinkling his nose at the smell. He frowned in concern at the speeder, and decided to duck into the Cantina to wait, and keep an eye out for trouble, while his wayward charge explored the control panels and interior of </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dick Turpin.</span>
  </em>
  <span> How much trouble could the boy get into in a speeder?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I heard there’s a Jedi living in the Jasmine district,” Amilyn told Leia. Leia had cajoled her parents into inviting her friend to visit her on Alderaan, and both were privately relieved to be free of their junior senatorial internship duties of fetching papers, taking holo-calls, and wearing heavy, uncomfortably starched, constricting formal clothes. Instead, they were sprawling on a stone bench in the royal garden, eating the ice cream confections Leia had liberated from the palace kitchens, unheeding of the drips on their clothing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia raised an eyebrow. “That seems unlikely,” she told Amilyn. “Everyone knows there aren’t any Jedi left. The empire killed them all.” Leia’s father, Bail Organa, had known Jedi during the Clone Wars, and sometimes told Leia bedtime stories about the adventures of General Obi-Wan Kenobi, but he always looked a bit sad when he spoke of his friend. “Besides, if there were a Jedi on Alderaan, I’m sure my father would know.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s what I heard the port officials saying when they were bringing my bags off of the shuttle,” Amilyn elaborated, pushing her emerald green hair back. “That there was a woman in the Jasmine district who had an ancient book of prophecies, and had all sorts of ancient-looking equipment like dowsing rods and pendulums, and was wearing a piece of kyber crystal on a necklace. Sounds like a Jedi, to me. She moved here from Coruscant.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia couldn’t imagine a Jedi living somewhere like Coruscant, but her curiosity was piqued. “We should go and see, at least,” she decided. “Alderaan’s a lot safer than Coruscant, but if the port staff have heard there’s a Jedi moving into the city, it’s only a matter of time before the stormtroopers hear, too. We’ve got to warn her!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Jasmine district was picturesque. It was primarily residential, and featured row upon row of neat little cottages in the old Alderaanian countryside style, with sloped roofs meant to allow winter snow to slide off of them easily. They all had neatly cared for gardens, that were beginning to bloom. Anathema’s cottage garden was fragrant with jasmine and vividly bright flame-lilies. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“A Jedi?” Anathema asked, once she had ushered her two young guests to take seats at her kitchen table. She regarded with bemusement the determined children and cheerful astromech droid in front of her. “Oh, no, I’m a witch.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia frowned seriously. “That’s silly. Witches aren’t real, but Jedi are.” She looked worried. “If you don’t hide better, the Stormtroopers will come after you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Amilyn pushed her green hair behind her ear. “Witches could be real,” she suggested, sounding hopeful. “If she says she’s a witch, then she must be a witch.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If you’re not a Jedi, are you a Sith?” Leia asked sharply, looking grim, her brown eyes fiery.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nope. Not a Jedi, not a Sith. Just a witch.” Anathema poured them all glasses of iced fizzy Moogan tea.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia looked at her dubiously, but Anathema held her gaze. Finally Leia nodded her acceptance, as if she had measured the sincerity of the woman across the table from her, and, having peeled her open and stared into her soul, accepted her word as truth. Anathema shuddered a bit. Was it normal for a child to have eyes that could see right through you, like that?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A thought occurred to Anathema, who was the sort of person who had a hard time not taking her work home with her. “Say, have you two kids noticed anything odd happening in the area?” Anathema asked. “Great beasts appearing, metal monsters, or ominous stars appearing in the sky?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Amilyn blinked, raising an eyebrow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia considered this, and then looked at her droid. “My tutors call Artoo a metal monster whenever he helps me reprogram the chronometers in the palace, so that I can leave class early. Does that count?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema tried to muffle her snort of laughter. “Not quite what I’m looking for.” She smiled, despite her frustration with the lack of results in her search. “I guess it’s back to the book, then,” she decided. “Maybe I missed something.” She shifted the stack of datapads on her desk, and then stiffened, as though she had been shot. “The book!” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema’s search of her belongings became frantic, she carelessly tossed belongings onto the floor, sifting through the half-unpacked crates on the kitchen table. “Where is it? Oh, where </span>
  <em>
    <span>is </span>
  </em>
  <span>it?” Her voice rose in strained panic. Amilyn and Leia scrambled to help her look, seeing how desperately frightened Anathema looked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The search was fruitless. Peculiarly, Leia found a number of books that Anathema had lost in years past, including a long-overdue library book. </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Nice and Accurate Prophecies</span>
  </em>
  <span>, however, failed to appear. Anathema’s growing headache overwhelmed her, and she sat down in the middle of her floor, despairing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, where was the last place you remember having it?” Amilyn asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I try to carry the book with me. I’ve been cross-referencing it against records of strange--” Anathema’s eyes widened behind her glasses. “Records. I had it when I went to the archive on Coruscant! That speeder! It must have fallen out of my bag, and into those men’s speeder, after they hit my bike!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Someone hit you with a speeder?” Amilyn gasped.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They didn’t mean to,” Anathema admitted. “They didn’t mean to take my book, either.” She cradled her head in her hands, glumly. “Three hundred and fifty years, my family have had that book, and I</span>
  <em>
    <span> lost</span>
  </em>
  <span> it. I can’t believe it.” Anathema felt like the worst descendant ever to have lived. She shook her head. “All my family have had occult powers, going all the way back,” she explained to the two girls seated at her kitchen table. We can find ley lines, and see auras.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ley lines? Auras?” Leia asked curiously.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ley lines are invisible lines of power. Auras are like invisible force fields around people. I can see their strength, their color, and use those to tell things about you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Amilyn’s mouth made a little ‘o’ of surprise. “There are really all these invisible things around, and we never knew?” she asked, feeling a bit cheated that she was only just learning about this now. “What does my aura look like?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema squinted through her goggles at Amilyn. A royal purple sunburst radiated from her. “It’s purple. That’s for leadership, independence, and boldness. You have a very strong aura.” Amilyn looked delighted at this news.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What color is my aura?” Leia wanted to know, feeling a bit left out. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema frowned. “I can’t see your aura,” she concluded, after a moment.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s okay,” Leia decided. “You’re probably still upset because of losing your book.” Anathema certainly looked it, even though Leia thought that she and Amilyn were doing a pretty good job distracting her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How come they don’t teach us about this at school?” Amilyn asked, still annoyed that such an interesting thing had apparently been kept secret from her by adults, who never shared anything interesting with kids, for fear that it might give them dangerous ideas.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema snorted contemptuously. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>School </span>
  </em>
  <span>is a part of the Imperial propaganda machine, and wants to squash any independent thinking or innovation.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia nodded seriously, leaning forward. Now Anathema was speaking her language. “What else don’t they teach us at school?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia already knew that she intended to join the Rebel Alliance the moment that she could. Her father, Bail Organa, insisted that she was still too young to involve herself in anything truly dangerous. He always looked sad, and very worried, after he had locked himself into his office to take a call from Mon Mothma or Admiral Yularen, but he refused to tell her what the conversations had been about. Leia wanted to know what her father was keeping from her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>***</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Something was on fire.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Well, a lot of things were on fire, Aziraphale corrected himself, but the fact that the ruin of the palatial room that he was picking his way through was slowly filling with thick smoke suggested that something worryingly nearby might be on fire. Likely the very building that Aziraphale was inside of.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Aziraphale’s lightsaber hummed reassuringly in his hand, illuminating the corners of the dark room in a faint wash of new leaf green. Even without the smoke, it would have been dark. It was made of black stone, and the walls were draped in thick, muffling black tapestries that depicted disturbing scenes of violence and slaughter.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>There was something here, Aziraphale could sense it. Some dark presence, still troubling the halls of a building that had once housed the Sith cultists who had occupied Coruscant.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The sound of something exploding, somewhere in the skies overhead made Aziraphale jump. He raised his saber, calling out, “I know you’re there! Come out, now, or I shall be forced to fight you, as a Knight of the Jedi Order.” He was very proud that his voice was so steady, despite the continued sounds of aerial bombardment, and ground battle, in the distance, as the Jedi fought to overtake the occupied capital of the crumbling Republic from the Sith army. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Aziraphale?” Came a shaky voice. “S’that you?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Crowley?” Aziraphale searched the room more carefully with his eyes, using a miracle to will more light into the room than his lightsaber could normally cast. It was no wonder he hadn’t seen the demon immediately. Crowley was on the floor, pinned under a bit of stonework that had been jolted free by the impact of laser fire. Aziraphale scrambled to his side. “My dear,” he murmured. “What’s wrong, why can’t you miracle yourself free?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Ngk,” Crowley grimaced, his face pale and damp with sweat. “This all,” his yellow eyes darted around, indicating the building around them. “Used to be part of a Temple. S’not so bad, now, desssecrated, n’all that.” He panted shallowly. “Missed this bit.” He patted the rock that rested over his midsection, and flinched quickly pulling his hand away from the faint remains of ancient holy words.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Aziraphale swore quietly, which drew an appreciative glance from Crowley. The stonework shuddered, and rose obligingly into the air, away from the gasping demon prone on the floor. The stone found itself abruptly on Jakku, rather than Coruscant, dropping into the desert sand and startling a very confused lizard.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Aziraphale ran gentle hands over Crowley’s abdomen, grimacing at the shift of broken ribs as his friend coughed. He concentrated carefully, and a moment later, Crowley was able to draw a deep breath again, and the lines of pain melted away from his face. He curled in towards Aziraphale slightly, chasing the sensation of comfort and relief.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Will they notice the miracle?” he asked quietly, after they lay on the stone floor for a moment. Aziraphale considered. “Not in the middle of a battlefield,” he decided. “They sent me here to ensure that the Jedi win this battle against the Sith army, so that the Galactic Republic can be restored after this occupation. They won’t think anything of a bit of healing on this mission, not enough to wonder who I healed.” His hand was wrapped tightly around Crowley’s he noticed. Outside, something exploded. “It’s almost over,” he noted. “Will your lot be angry, about the fall of the Sith?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Nah,” Crowley said. “There was so much infighting, so much betrayal and violence, towards the end, that it’ll keep them happy for centuries.” He swallowed. “Didn’t even have to tempt them into it,” he confessed. “They came up with it all on their own.” His fingers laced themselves together with Aziraphale’s. Neither of them commented on it. “Besides, Darth Bane survived this mess. Came up with this idea, The Rule of Two. Only two Sith Lords at a time, a Master and an Apprentice. Seems a good excuse for a bit of a break from this ‘Dark Lord’ bit. Can’t pretend I’m a Sith when there are only two of them running around the galaxy. It’ll be good to cause mundane trouble, for a bit.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>***</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale had been strange, over the comm. He’d sounded distracted, and anxious. It made sense, with the end of the world pressing in suffocatingly close, until they felt smothered by the promise of the impending War. It was no wonder Aziraphale was nervous, Crowley thought. He couldn’t picture the angel with a blade in his hand, at least not with any intent to use it, for all that Crowley first glimpse of the angel had been while he slipped past the guards at the gates of Eden, in the shape of a black and red-scaled serpent. Aziraphale had been armed with a holy weapon, a glowing flame-bright sword of amber plasma, that spat and flickered like firelight. He’d given the fiery sword to the humans, who had been cast out into the cold for their sin, defenseless. Aziraphale had carried weapons since, favoring lightsabers over the years, but he avoided using them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Or had it been the speeder crash that had shaken Aziraphale so badly? He had seemed his usual self, self-righteously pointing out that he had warned Crowley about his flying before. Aziraphale always did enjoy being right. No, it must have been something else. The girl had been fine, after all; nothing wrong that a quick miracle hadn’t fixed. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale hadn’t just sounded anxious, when Crowley had called to check in. He had sounded guilty.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Well, if Aziraphale couldn’t find any answers, it was up to Crowley to use what limited connections he had. How fortunate that he had an entire secret army of Witchfinders to call upon. Shadwell was a crank, but Crowley could hope that the rest of his organization might get the job done, and find the missing antichrist. He activated his comm.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia clutched the Rebel communication recording to her chest, her eyes fixed on the little blue holographic figure, its arms outstretched beseeching an uncaring universe, as it recited the atrocities of the Empire, speaking of death, of the destruction of war, of the pollution of mines and shipyards, of famine as the Empire taxed planets until they were unable to feed their own populace. Rumors of a superweapon, designed to end entire worlds. The tiny figure’s face contorted with pain and sorrow. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia curled up into a ball, angry and filled with directionless desire to help. The figure in the message was dead, she knew, and had been long before Leia had ever viewed this holo message. She couldn’t help this person, begging for help. It was too late. Was it too late for the rest of the galaxy? There was so much that needed fixing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The hologram image rewound itself, and began playing again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Somewhere over the occupied planet, Lothal, an Imperial Star Destroyer vanished from space.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale closed the comm channel to Sergeant Shadwell, with the strong feeling that he was grasping at straws. He thought again of the blankly contemptuous faces of the Archangels, when he had appealed to them to find some way to end the war before it began, and shuddered. He was desperately glad that he had chosen to keep back what he had discovered in the book of prophecies. The antichrist’s name: Leia Organa--a princess of the planet Alderaan, no less!--and the starting place of Armageddon: in space, above the surface of Alderaan. He needed to talk to Crowley.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The comm chirped, and Aziraphale scrambled for it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s me. Meet me at the third alternative rendezvous.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Admiral Yularen of the Rebel Alliance looked up from his desk, where he had been struggling to find a way to stretch the few ships that made up the Rebel Alliance’s in-atmosphere attack force to effectively provide cover fire for their ground troops. A young pilot, still in her orange canvas flight suit gasped for breath in the doorway.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What is it?” Yularen asked, alarmed. Were they being attacked? Had the Empire found their location.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ships! Speeders! They just appeared, Sir,” she looked bewildered. “Hundreds of T-16 Skyhoppers, they just appeared out of nowhere in the hangar bay!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt, armed with all the accoutrements of a Witchfinder Private (1), hurried out of Madame Tracy’s cantina. He felt full of a sense of purpose, though he had the sneaking suspicion that whatever he found on Alderaan, it was unlikely to be a witch. Still, those strange gravitational patterns, as if a new moon had appeared to orbit the planet, affecting the tides and weather patterns… </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Well, regardless, Newt was glad to be getting off of Tatooine, and away from Shadwell and his fondness of blue milk, taken with nine sugars, and paired with a side of cheese and onion-flavored ration sticks. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He opened the hatch on </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dick Turpin</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and flicked the controls to start its engines, which rattled obligingly to life. He layed in a course for the spaceport where Newt intended to secure transport to Alderaan for himself and his faithful speeder, in the cargo hanger of a larger freight ship. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>From where they had rushed to hide themselves inside the control primary control panel (2), Luke and Biggs looked at each other in wide-eyed panic, feeling the three-winged ship lift itself off the ground and accelerate shakily. “Oh, no! Master Luke--” Luke shoved a hand over Threepio’s mouth, quickly, hissing for him to be quiet.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On the ground below, Obi-Wan Kenobi rushed out of the cantina, cursing to himself. He scrambled into a passing airspeeder, to the shock of the Ithorian flying it. “Follow that ship!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>1) <span>Pin of righteousness, navicompass of discovery (and not getting lost), ration sticks of snacking, bell, datapad, and emergency flare.</span><br/><br/></p>
<p>
  <span>2) And it had taken some serious bending of reality, on the part of an antichrist, to fit two children and a droid there.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Crash and Burn</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>
  <span>They met in Monument Plaza, the only place on Coruscant where the bare earth of the planet remained uncovered by duracrete. The old statues they remembered from centuries past had been replaced by severe iron-grey edifices honoring the heroes of the Empire, but there were still colorful banners and ribbons festooning the ancient limbs of the tree next to the bandstand in the North Garden. There were no ducks here; Coruscant had them in zoos, but supported little wildlife. Aziraphale missed their park on Alderaan. He missed his bookshop, and hoped he could miracle himself home after their meeting, rather than resorting to transport by ship.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley was already waiting, when Aziraphale arrived, every line of his angular figure tense with nervous energy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Any news?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale flinched, his heart in his throat. “News? What kind of news would that be?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley scoffed. “Well, have you found the missing antichrist’s name, address, and shoe size, yet?” The fury in his voice was the sort that came from feeling helpless, and being unable to do anything about it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale thought of the notes, tucked away between the leaves of that miraculous book, in his shop, and readied himself to lie to the person who deserved it least. “Shoe size? Why would I have her shoe size?” He wanted to be distracted from everything he wasn’t saying by falling into the familiar rhythm of petty bickering.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley didn’t bite. “Yeah, I’ve got nothing, either.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s the Great Plan, Crowley.” What could either of them do against forces so much greater than them? Against God, Herself? What should Aziraphale even want to do? He did, though. He wasn’t sure what sort of angel that made him, but he had to believe that it would all come out alright in the end. That Heaven would come to its senses, and stop all of this, before it was too late. The Archangels seemed impassive, but surely the Almighty couldn’t be?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Great Plan!” Crowley howled, all that energy erupting into a brief whirlwind of sound and movement, his cloak sweeping behind the furious arc of his body as he spun, screaming at the sky. “Bollocks to the Great Plan!” He looked like the Sith Lord he pretended to be, raging fruitlessly. The tour group of Bothan schoolchildren on the other side of the Plaza were giving them a wide berth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale looked upwards, feeling intensely anxious. He hoped to draw God’s attention favorably, but Crowley seemed intent on doing the exact opposite. “May you be forgiven.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I </span>
  <em>
    <span>won’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>be forgiven. Not ever.” There was anger and hurt in every line of Crowley’s body, in his voice as he hurled the words. “Part of a demon’s job description. That’s what I am.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It cut Aziraphale to the heart, and everything he had been trying not to think about bled out, leaving him feeling like he was overwhelmed and drowning in the flood of it. If they couldn’t stop this, it wasn’t just the end for the galaxy, for humanity, and every one of the myriad species of mortal creatures that occupied the star systems. It was the end for </span>
  <em>
    <span>them. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Because, Crowley was a demon, and Aziraphale was an angel, and there was about to be a </span>
  <em>
    <span>war. </span>
  </em>
  <span>“You were an angel once.” Aziraphale wasn’t entirely sure who he was pleading with, in that moment. He wasn’t sure it was Crowley.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That was a long time ago.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley seemed to gather himself, seeing Aziraphale’s anguish, and leaned in close. “Look, we’ll find the girl. My agents can do it.” Aziraphale couldn’t see Crowley’s eyes behind his dark glasses, but his voice was soothing, pitched to reassure his friend.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And then what?” Aziraphale pressed, laying bare the dilemma he had been carrying with him since he discovered Leia Organa’s name. “We eliminate her?” It would be difficult. A princess was highly visible, and might have bodyguards, but it could be done. He didn’t want to do it. His mind turned inescapably to the times he had been forced to stand aside and see children slaughtered, the anguish he had felt. How could Aziraphale bear it, this time, when it would be his decision, and not Heaven’s? He unclipped his lightsaber from his belt, and proffered it to Crowley beseechingly. “I’ve never killed anything.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley hesitated, his eyes on the saber. He refused to take the weapon, as Aziraphale had already known he would. Crowley might protest against Aziraphale declaring him kind, but he was. “I’m not personally up for killing kids.” Crowley thought of the massacre at the Jedi Temple, and shuddered.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re a demon. I’m the nice one,” Aziraphale begged, well aware that it wasn’t as simple as that. “I don’t have to kill children.” He hadn’t, thus far, but only because he’d gotten lucky and Heaven had given those orders to other angels. “If you kill her, the universe gets a reprieve, and Heaven won’t have blood on its hands.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley stared at Aziraphale in disbelief and hurt. Was this what Aziraphale was willing to reduce them both to? Pantomime caricatures of an angel and a demon? Did he really, after so much time, think that Crowley could ever unflinchingly murder a child? Was Aziraphale really asking this of Crowley, as if that might allow the angel to avoid responsibility for it? “No blood on your hands?” Crowley hissed. “That’s a bit holier-than-thou.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I </span>
  <em>
    <span>am</span>
  </em>
  <span> holier-than-thou.” Hadn’t Crowley pointed out as much? This was a terrible thing to ask, but it would buy them time, before Hell sent up another antichrist to replace the murdered one. If Crowley never forgave him, at least he would be alive to hate Aziraphale. Once the war began, they would never see one another again. And if they did? Well, that would be </span>
  <em>
    <span>worse.</span>
  </em>
  <span> “I’m not killing anybody.” The worst part, the part that made Aziraphale want to crawl out of his own skin, was that he had spent all day coming to a slow understanding that he might. That he didn’t know what he was capable of, if pushed, and that he was increasingly frightened by the prospect of finding out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This is ridiculous. I don’t even know why I’m still talking to you!” Crowley threw up his hands, and began to march away in a flurry of black robes. He didn’t want to argue about this anymore. If Aziraphale wanted to put their fates in Crowley’s hands, that was fine. Crowley was going to find a way out for them, one that didn’t involve murdering children.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You can’t leave, Crowley!” Aziraphale demanded, feeling tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. “There’s nowhere to go!” He gestured to the Plaza around them. Coruscant’s skyline stretched above them, thick with arriving and departing ships. Not a single one of them could take Crowley far enough away to escape the end of the world. Aziraphale realized that he was panicking; he had stopped breathing at some point, and never started again. His hand fisted around his lightsaber hilt, manicured fingernails digging into its leather wrap.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley turned back around. “It’s a big galaxy out there! Even if this all--” he indicated the galaxy with a broad sweep of his arms “--ends up as a pile of burning goo, we can go off together. Wild space is big enough; we can disappear.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Go off together?” Aziraphale was crying now, he could feel the cold of tears on his face, and the burning heat behind his eyes. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>wanted</span>
  </em>
  <span> this impossible dream that Crowley was offering him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How long have we been friends, Aziraphale? Six thousand years.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’re not friends,” Aziraphale lied, hating himself, desperately afraid, desperately hopeful. “We’re an angel and a demon. We have nothing in common. I don’t even like you.” Never had he uttered such a baldfaced lie, not since God had asked him what he had done with the flaming sword.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley was a demon, and could feel every lie Aziraphale uttered. “You do,” he crooned, laying the truth bare between them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Even if I did know where the antichrist was, I wouldn’t tell you! We’re on opposite sides!” Aziraphale was pacing now, feeling cornered by Crowley’s knowledge of him, even in the open space of Monument Plaza. The thought of the book pressed at him again. It wanted to claw its way out his throat. He wanted to tell Crowley everything. He was a terrible angel.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’re on our side.” Crowley was so certain. This, too, was a truth he was laying between them like a gift. It hurt. It was the most wonderful thing Aziraphale had ever heard.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There is no ‘our side,’ Crowley. Not anymore.” How could Crowley not feel the end coming for them? It was as though solid ground were crumbling away under Aziraphale’s feet. He was just waiting to fall. There was no more time. He would be expected to take up his sword. How could he refuse? Refusing or accepting, either possibility would be the end of him, the end of them. “It’s over.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley gritted his teeth, pain clear in his face. “Angel, please,” he hissed. “I don’t--” He leaned in close, arms wide, and the anger that had been in his face was entirely gone, replaced by something gentle. Trust. Love.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale shook, and he pressed the ignition switch on the saber in his hand. Plasma hummed in the air between them, illuminating Crowley’s disbelieving face a sickly green. Aziraphale could feel his wings unfurl behind him, making him appear larger than he was. The world around them froze in place, unaware of what was happening at the heart of Coruscant’s only garden. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He felt very small, as Crowley stared at him in betrayal.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale just wanted so desperately for Crowley to leave, to be safe from him. Aziraphale was an angel, and Crowley was a demon. Aziraphale would be called to fight for Heaven. He couldn’t refuse, because </span>
  <em>
    <span>it was what he was. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He would have to face Crowley from across a battlefield. And Crowley, who looked at him with trust and love, would let Aziraphale cut him down. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So Crowley had to go, to be as far away from Aziraphale as possible when the war started. Aziraphale pressed in, lightsaber humming, and Crowley freed his own lightsaber from where it was clasped on his belt, parrying Aziraphale’s blade in a concise slash of red light. Their blades caught together, and Crowley pressed in hard, leaning his weight into the blade lock, pushing Aziraphale backwards, disbelief giving way to anger. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fine!” Crowley snarled, and twisted sharply to break the lock. Aziraphale stumbled forward, and Crowley darted away, his red lightsaber held up defensively. “I’m going home, Angel,” he spat. “I’m getting my stuff, and I’m leaving! And when I’m off in wild space, discovering new worlds?” Firelight-gold eyes met blue ones from behind dark glasses. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“I won’t even think about you.” </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley extinguished his lightsaber, and stormed away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale stood there for a moment, staring after him, full of regret and despair. He doused his own blade, turning the bronze-colored hilt, with its worn leather wrap, over and over in his hands.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Obi-Wan hadn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>meant </span>
  </em>
  <span>to cause the speeder to crash. He’d only wanted, above all else, to stop Luke Skywalker from leaving Tatooine, let alone approaching Alderaan, and his twin sister. No one could fail to notice the twins’ strength in the Force, should they come into proximity to one another. The Emperor might not know what it was that had caused the rippling shockwave in the Force, but he would certainly send Darth Vader to investigate the disturbance. That would be disastrous.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dick Turpin </span>
  </em>
  <span>zipped out of the hangar of the larger transport ship, quickly orienting itself along the main air lane from the spaceport to Aldera City, Obi-Wan had pursued in his own “borrowed” speeder. When the T-16 entered the Jasmine District, the Jedi had seen his opportunity, swerving into the path of the other speeder, calling on the Force to try to get a grip on the ship, and halt its momentum.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt, who had been distracted with trying to find the source of the odd noises that seemed to be coming from behind the control panels--did his speeder have a mynock infestation?--looked up to see a strange robed figure jumping from a speeder into his path, and panicked, yanking hard on the controls. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dick Turpin </span>
  </em>
  <span>responded obligingly, boosted into a magnificent barrel roll by Obi-Wan’s attempted Force shove, hurtling upwards and cartwheeling, it’s three wings rotating like a pinwheel, until it plummeted back to the ground with a crunch.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Obi-Wan swore loudly, and, hearing a yell from approaching passers-by, quickly ducked away to hide behind a hedge of flame-roses.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Two small figures, followed by a silver and blue droid that trundled along behind them, had been making their way along the road, bickering over the merits of Tookas and Loth-Cats as pets. They had heard the sound of the crash, and pelted towards the wreckage. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Obi-Wan startled in shock, trying not to sneeze (1), as he took in the familiar features of the little brown-haired girl, cursing himself. The hatch of the T-16 opened and a cloud of smoke billowed out, four figures emerging out of it. The two boys were hauling the unconscious witchfinder private between them, the children looking slightly singed, but otherwise unharmed. A familiar gold-colored protocol droid scrambled after them, trying to assist. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia Organa and her blue-haired friend ran to them, helping them prop the much-taller Newt Pulsifer up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh no, is he hurt?” Obi-Wan heard the cyan-haired girl ask.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He hit his head, I think,” Luke answered.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You think?” Leia echoed, unimpressed. The bump on the man’s head was rapidly swelling to Porg egg size. The impact his head had made with the speeder seemed like it would have been obvious to another passenger.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We, um,” Luke looked sheepish. “We were inside the control panels in the speeder, so we couldn’t really see what was happening.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What were you doing in there?” Amilyn asked, raising a bright blue eyebrow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We didn’t mean to stow away,” Biggs told her, “but we wanted a closer look at the ship, and then the owner came back, and we didn’t want to get into trouble, so we hid. It just kind of happened.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Amilyn grinned. “I think I want to hear the whole story. I’m Amilyn Holdo, and this is my friend Leia Organa.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Biggs Darklighter. This is Luke Skywalker.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Pleased to meet you,” Leia said impatiently. “Now, c’mon, we have a friend who lives near here. She can help patch this guy up.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Well, now he’d done it. In trying to prevent Luke from running into Leia, Obi-Wan had facilitated it happening. Obi-Wan watched cautiously from around the corner, as Anikin’s children and their friends dragged the speeder pilot off towards the row of quaint houses along the road. He needed to contact Master Yoda. Now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia, Luke, Biggs and Amilyn stumbled through the door of Anathema’s home, all of them talking over each other in a rush of “</span>
  <em>
    <span>--speeder crash--” “--strange old man in a robe--” “--didn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>mean </span>
  <em>
    <span>to stow away--” “--think he’s bleeding--” “--where are we--” “--can you help, Anathema?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Artoo was beeping anxiously, and another droid, plated with gold, was murmuring, “Oh, dear me!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema looked up from where she was plotting out the locations of Imperial military installations on a map, to peer at them, and then at Newt, who was groaning quietly, an impressive bump forming on his temple. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected Newt to be like, exactly, but this wasn’t quite it. (2)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Right,” Anathema said, “get him upstairs, and onto the bed. I’ve already got a medikit out.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After they had hauled the gangly witchfinder up the stairs, and heaved him awkwardly onto Anathema’s bed in a tangle of limbs, Anathema opened the medikit, which was laid neatly out on the bedside table.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’ve already got it out?” Luke asked. He stared as Anathema opened a package of bacta-aid, wrinkling his nose at its astringent smell. “It’s like you were expecting him.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I was,” Anathema answered. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She’s a witch,” Amilyn hissed quietly to Biggs. “That’s how she knows.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema sighed, looking troubled. “I was hoping he wouldn’t arrive. Maybe then, none of it would be real. Not the beast, not the Star of Death, none of it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Star of Death?” Luke asked, his mind fixing on the memory of the flimsi clipping he had seen in </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dick Turpin. </span>
  </em>
  <span>None of the things in the clippings had seemed like anything that could ever be real, but Anathema was saying that this one was. Luke had felt a lot better about the galaxy before he had known that it had a planet-destroying superweapon in it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Beast?” Leia asked. “Like we joked about Artoo being?” Anathema shook her head.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s nothing,” Anathema insisted. “Nothing you kids need to worry about, anyway.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia frowned like a thundercloud. That was so like an adult, not to tell them anything that was important, that actually mattered.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Amilyn looked at her friend in worry, registering her anger. Hopefully, a distraction might take her friend’s mind off of it, until she cooled down a bit. “C’mon, Leia, let’s take Luke and Biggs outside, and we’ll all go play while Anathema helps patch him up.” She indicated the prone man. “Oh, and Threepio and Artoo can come, too.” She started for the stairs.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia stared through her. “Did I say that you could go?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What?” Amilyn felt frozen in place. Luke shifted in confusion, where he stood near Anathema. His head was suddenly full of whispering voices. He shook it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia blinked. “No, sorry, you’re right, of course. Let’s go play.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hastur (3) shrieked in disbelief and horror.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The puddle of putrid ooze that had, a moment ago, been Ligur (4) sizzled faintly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley waited patiently from his seat at his desk for Hastur to stop gibbering. He idly shook the aerosolized spray can in his hand. It rattled ominously. He glanced upwards at the painting that hung on the wall of his “throne room.” (5)  Arcs of brilliant orange spray paint depicting a stylized fire-bird with its wings outstretched in a defiant arc. It illuminated the dark space of the large canvas. Somewhere deep in the shadowy painted expanse, a convor’s eyes glimmered.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You-- you-- you killed him!” Hastur shrieked in disbelief. “He hadn’t done nothing to you!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yet.” Crowley snarled. “You two came here to kill </span>
  <em>
    <span>me. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Didn’t exactly leave me much choice, did you?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But you-- Holy water! How could you?! Even a </span>
  <em>
    <span>demon</span>
  </em>
  <span> wouldn’t resort to-- I’ll </span>
  <em>
    <span>kill you!</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mm.” Crowley pointed the paint sprayer at Hastur, carefully steadying his aim. “Do you know what this is?” His voice was steady, in sharp contrast to Hastur’s. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>This </span>
  </em>
  <span>is a high velocity, wide coverage airbrush paint sprayer. I got it from a Mandalorian kid who uses these to deploy explosive paints. Likes her art to really leave an impression. It’s not full of paint-- I know explosives aren’t going to give </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> pause-- It’s full of holy water. The</span>
  <em>
    <span> holiest. </span>
  </em>
  <span>It can turn </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> into </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span>,</span>
  <em>
    <span>” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Crowley’s eyes flicked to the puddle of ex-Ligur. He met Hastur’s void-black eyes, narrowing his own behind his sunglasses, and said something he had secretly always wanted to. “Ask yourself, do you feel lucky? Well, do you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hastur stared, as Crowley’s finger brushed the airbrush canister’s nozzle, and came away stained purple. He smirked, vicious as a gundark, and just as toothily. “Yes. Do you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>With a flick of Hastur’s finger, the airbrush canister exploded in a mist of purple paint, turning the shiny leaves of a potted crystal fern a lovely shade of plum. Crowley shook his purple-splattered hand, cursing. Crowley’s wristcomm chirped somewhere underneath the layer of paint. “I know where the antichrist is--” came Aziraphale’s voice. Crowley shut the comm off without looking away from Hastur, who was beginning to circle closer, looking smug. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley backed up carefully, trying to put the bulk of his desk more firmly between Hastur and himself. Aziraphale’s urgent voice was still bouncing around in his skull, tying his intestines in knots with the visceral memory of green plasma hot next to his face, and Aziraphale’s eyes full of tears and resolute desperation. “Hastur, be reasonable--” Could Crowley get his own saber lit before Hastur killed him? He didn’t like his odds.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m a demon, Crowley,” Hastur spat. “We don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>do </span>
  </em>
  <span>reasonable. But I can see that you’ve forgotten that, palling around with angels. Maybe I’ll pay your little friend a visit, when I’m done with you…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley’s heart was pounding in his ears, and his skin was crawling, itching sharply with electricity. He could taste ozone on his tongue, as it flicked out, snake-like, in alarm. The room’s air felt thick, charged.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hastur stuttered to a stop, his eyes flicking around wildly, getting wide around the edges. “What is-- This feels--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Burning, blinding light sparked up along Crowley’s skin, which felt unbearably hot and tight. It shot through his veins, gathering in his fingers, which spat vicious sparks of energy, lighting up the dark room.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hastur shrieked. “What are you?!” He asked. “Demons don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>smite! </span>
  </em>
  <span>What are you?!</span>
  <em>
    <span>”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lightning, Crowley realized, pointing his finger at Hastur, and watching the arc of blinding light leap at him. It’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>Force lightning! </span>
  </em>
  <span>Hastur vanished in a sizzle of burning flesh, discorporated. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, but Sith Lords do.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley collapsed, panting against his gilded throne. It wouldn’t have killed Hastur, but without a corporeal form, the Duke of Hell wouldn’t be able to seek Crowley out again while he was topside. And Hastur wouldn’t be able to go after--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Aziraphale,” Crowley mumbled, looking at his comm. It was fried beyond repair. A miracle could mend it, though. Crowley drew on his exhausted reserves, and snapped his fingers. He pressed the button to open a channel to the last caller. There was a faint burst of static, and then the comm blinked a forlorn red, indicating that the call could not be connected.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale was shaking. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was going to be alright, Aziraphale told himself. If he could just speak with the Almighty, She would stop all of this before it started. He had to believe that. He had to believe that there was a chance that everything wouldn’t end today, that he wouldn’t lose everything he loved. He wondered if he had already destroyed it, himself, when he drew his lightsaber on Crowley.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The rug was hastily shoved aside, and Aziraphale could see the bare floor of his Alderaanian bookshop, and the sigils chalked onto it with care. He lit the candles that surrounded the channel in a neat ring. You couldn’t just comm Heaven. He clasped his hands, and prayed. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The chalk circle glowed, and a voice thundered through the shop’s interior. “Speak, Aziraphale!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale hesitated, then stepped forward a bit hopefully, peering into the shining light. “Am I-- Am I speaking to God?” the angel asked. This wasn’t much like the last time Aziraphale had conversed with the Almighty, just after Adam and Eve had fled the Garden. Her voice had been warmer then, he thought, even though he had wanted to curl up and hide from Her question. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You are speaking to the Metatron. To speak to me is to speak to God.” This wasn’t quite true. Metatron was a spokesperson; he would only repeat the party line.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This is because I lied to Her, Aziraphale thought with dread. Why would God listen to someone who had lied to her before?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He had to try. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The antichrist. I know who she is. I know where she is. So, there doesn’t need to be any of that nonsense about seas turning to blood, or anything. There needn’t be a war,” he pleaded. “We can save everyone!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The point is not to avoid the war. The point is to win it,” Metatron explained, as if speaking to a very small child.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale felt his heart sink. “Ah.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He had been placing all his hope in the intervention of God, in the idea that he just had to convince someone that the universe was worth saving, and everything would be fine. But the only other supernatural being who believed that was Crowley.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley had been right, of course. They were on their own. They had more in common with each other, than they did with anyone on either of their “sides.” Left without hope, Aziraphale scrambled for knowledge.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What sort of initiating event will precipitate the war?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We thought a planet-destroying superweapon would be a nice start,” Metatron answered cheerily. “The Death Star is currently entering the space above this very planet! The battle will begin soon, Aziraphale. Join us!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh,” Aziraphale dithered. “I must wrap up things here, you know. I’ve a couple of things left to tie up.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We will leave the gateway open.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It sounded like a threat. The light dimmed slightly, but continued to glimmer faintly, waiting. Aziraphale scrambled for his comm. It beeped obligingly, opening the channel for him. “Crowley,” he cried desperately, “I know where the antichrist is!” The comm call disconnected with a beep. It was no less than he deserved. He should have told Crowley the moment he knew Leia’s name. He’d been so foolish, and so cruel. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Behind Aziraphale the door of the bookshop blew open, and the candles guttered in the wind. There was a furious shout.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sergeant Shadwell?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Emperor stared past Darth Vader’s kneeling form, out into the starless night of Coruscant, all distant suns vanished in the light pollution of its endless city. His fingers curled around the arms of his throne like claws. “Did you know,” he asked mildly, “that the Star Destroyer </span>
  <em>
    <span>Inflictor </span>
  </em>
  <span>has been reported vanished over Corellia, as of yesterday. That makes twenty. Twenty Star Destroyer class vessels vanished without a trace!” The crags of the Emperor’s face twisted into a snarl.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Vader, wise enough to know when speaking up invited pain, said nothing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And in their place? Spice freighters! Spice freighters full of adventurer navigators, dashing smugglers, and swashbuckling pirate-heroes, like something out of a story a child had invented for himself.” The Emperor’s disgust was palpable.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Emperor frowned, his eyes finally focusing on the figure of his apprentice. “It’s as if something is reshaping reality around it, in ways that even the Force can’t predict or combat. Have you felt it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I have, my Master,” Vader responded. “It feels… familiar.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It does, doesn’t it?” Palpatine mused. “I wonder…” He paused, unsure whether he wanted to share his musings with his apprentice, but eventually continued. “When I was young, my own Master encountered a creature of darkness that called itself a Sith, but wielded power unlike the Force. This being could bend the fabric of reality to its whims, but had no presence in the Force.” Palpatine discarded the memory of the red-haired dark-robed being. “But that was many years ago.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Palpatine shook his head, dismissing his thoughts. “It matters not. The Death Star’s construction has been accelerated beyond our hopes by Grand Moff Zuigiber. Soon, we shall be ready to test it. And I know just the planet.” He cackled.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>1) He was allergic to flame-roses.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>2) One hoped for tall, dark, and handsome, but seldom got it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>3) Duke of Hell, Champion Lurker. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>4) Duke of Hell, Gold Medal in Lurking.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>5) Every Sith lair had to have one. He didn’t make the rules.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Choices</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Obi-Wan Kenobi closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, allowing himself to slip gradually into a trance state. He could feel the Force Ghost of his Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, acting as a bridge, boosting his “signal” to allow him to reach Master Yoda, on the distant planet Dagobah. He could sense Yoda’s surprise and apprehension. They hadn’t spoken to one another in eleven years.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Luke has left Tatooine, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Obi-Wan thought. </span>
  <em>
    <span>He stowed away, by accident, on the ship of a young ex-Imperial spacer. I have followed him to Alderaan.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Alderaan!</span>
  </em>
  <span> Yoda’s worry increased sharply. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Meet with his sister, he must not! Obvious in the Force, their presences will become, if amplified by one another.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>That’s what I thought, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Obi-Wan replied. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Only, I’m afraid it’s too late. It’s as if fate drew them together. The young man crashed the speeder that Luke and his friend, as well as their droid, stowed away on. Leia stumbled upon the crash site. They’ve already met.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He hesitated. </span>
  <em>
    <span>They’ve met, but… It doesn’t feel as though proximity has made them more obvious in the Force. There is a sense of some great change occurring in the galaxy, but it can’t be pinpointed. It is as if something is acting to hide the twins. Some sort of camouflage. It’s as if they have no presence at all in the Force.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Yoda reflected upon this. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Rare it is, for the force-sensitive to be able to hide themselves from the senses of Jedi and Sith. On one occasion only, this has happened in my memory.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>What occasion was that, Master Yoda?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Remember, I do, a Jedi archivist whose name no one knew. Unfelt, was his presence in the Force. When I was a padawan learner, this was. Saw him again, I did, many years later, before the purge, copying sacred texts. Changed, he had not. Yet human, he appeared to be. </span>
  </em>
  <span>This should have been impossible. Yoda was hundreds of years old. No human he had met as a Padawan could have appeared again at the fall of the Order, looking as if no time had passed. Yoda hummed to himself, in the back of his throat. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Strange, this is. Very strange.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Do you think that whatever power is hiding Luke and Leia is connected to him?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Unlikely, it seems. But vigilant, we must be! Follow them, Obi-Wan. Keep the children safe. They are our only hope.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Discorporation hurt. Aziraphale stumbled, trying to adjust from the sensation of having his corporeal body pulled apart into its component atoms. His celestial shape felt unfamiliar, without material softness enfolding it. His old war wound ached sharply in the chill of Heaven’s empty sterile air.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re late,” the Quartermaster noted disapprovingly, from where he was equipping the heavenly host for battle. “Aziraphale? Angel of the Eastern Gate? Your platoon is waiting for you.” The angel looked Aziraphale up and down, clearly disapproving. “Wait, where is your body?” He pointed at the lightsaber at Aziraphale’s waist, belted over his shining white robe. “That’s a human weapon, isn’t it?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Quartermaster grabbed the lightsaber from Aziraphale’s belt, igniting it, examining it critically. “I suppose it would serve, against a demon,” he decided. Aziraphale remembered the hum of the blade in his hands, as he had turned it against Crowley. He felt sick. (1) “It’s not holy. Where is the flaming sword you were issued?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I was discorporated,” Aziraphale admitted, carefully not answering the second question. If he hadn’t told God, Herself, he wasn’t telling the story to this upstart angel. “Hadn’t meant to step into the portal, you see. Wasn’t ready.” Stepping into the portal without taking off one’s corporation properly first was in some ways like stepping out into the vacuum of space without a protective spacesuit on. (2)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Quartermaster was quivering with indignation. “You’ve turned up late for Armageddon, with no flaming sword and no body, you pathetic excuse for an angel?!” He shoved the lightsaber hilt at Aziraphale, pushing Aziraphale back with the force of the shove.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale smiled faintly, hand closing on the saber hilt, and he pushed it firmly back into the Quartermaster’s hands. The set of his jaw was mulish. “I suppose I am, really. I have no intention of fighting in any war. I don’t ever intend to pick this lightsaber up again.” He had chosen whom he would stand with, and it wasn’t the ranks of Heaven. If that made him a bad angel, so be it. “I was in the middle of something very important; there was someone I was going to apologize to. I demand to be returned.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You haven’t got a body. What are you going to do, possess someone?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Demons can,” Aziraphale mused.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Quartermaster stared at him as though he were an idiot. “You’re not a demon, you’re an angel.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That was true, Aziraphale thought, but it didn't seem like an obstacle. He felt suddenly in control, a cool rush of calm flowing through his veins, and everything felt very clear. Some part of Aziraphale reached out, seeking purchase, and he pressed a bit of that calm clarity into the Quartermaster. “You will let me go about my business,” Aziraphale said firmly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I will let you go about your business,” the Quartermaster decided, sounding a bit dazed. He allowed Aziraphale to move past him, towards the gateway to the material world. “Wait, what--” The Quartermaster shook his head, looking horrified. “What </span>
  <em>
    <span>are </span>
  </em>
  <span>you?! Did you just-- Did you just possess me? Did you just take control of my mind? Angels don’t trick people’s minds!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, but Jedi Masters do.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale felt giddy. He turned to look at the map of the universe spread before in, in billions of points of light, took a deep breath, and leaped.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the sky above Alderaan, a moon that was not a moon rose. War smiled behind her Mandalorian armor.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’re going to be in so much trouble,” Biggs said quietly. It was beginning to sink in, surrounded by the mountainous green of Alderaan, looking out at the distant glimmer of snow on the peaks to the west of Aldera City, just how very far from home he and Luke were.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Luke’s eyes were wide with wonder, as he took in the world around him, the bustle of people going about their day in the city. They’d probably never heard of Tatooine, let alone the tiny backwater settlement of Anchorhead. He took a deep breath of the chill air, heavy with the scent of water. “Worth it,” he decided. “I don’t care how long Uncle Owen’s going to ground me. He was never going to let me leave home. There’s so much to see beyond Tatooine, the galaxy’s so much bigger than that.” He looked at Biggs seriously. “I want to be part of that. I don’t understand why he wants to hold me back.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Tatooine?” Amilyn asked, “Is that where you two and your droid came from?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, yes,” Threepio chimed in, turning away from Artoo who had been whistling garrulously at him, as the four children reclined in the palace garden of Alderaan. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia kicked a bit of stone with her perfectly white boot. “That’s just how adults are,” she told Luke. “My father’s the same way. The Empire’s using up the galaxy, ruining it, hurting all these people, and he won’t let me help stop them.” She met Luke’s eyes, and reality trembled. “It’s my galaxy, too. I should be able to do something about it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s ours. So, let’s do something. We can. Can you feel it, too?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia nodded. She could.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So could Amilyn Holdo and Biggs Darklighter, and they looked at one another uneasily. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The galaxy is </span>
  <em>
    <span>ours,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Leia said fiercely, seeming lit from within by some dark inner fire.</span>
  <em>
    <span> “</span>
  </em>
  <span>We can do what we like with it. If we want to start things over, we can. We could make a new Republic. No one could stop us!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If they tried, we’d make them go away,” Luke agreed. “We’d make better people, instead. They wouldn’t wreck the galaxy, if we made them do what we said.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Artoo beeped uneasily, a low electronic wail. Threepio rested a gold hand on the other droid’s silver dome, as much to seek comfort, as to offer it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Luke,” Biggs said hesitantly. “You’re scaring me. This isn’t you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How do you know? Maybe this is how I should be,” Luke said. The whispers in his head were crying out in chorus that he and Leia could mend the world, could end the world. What was the difference? Luke wasn’t certain, anymore.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How is that any better than the Empire?” Amilyn’s blue eyes flashed with anger. “Leia, are you really saying that if someone stood up to you, you’d hurt them, just to make them do what you say?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia flinched.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s not a Republic! That’s tyranny!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Luke’s and Leia’s eyes met in horror. The voices in their heads were deafening now, calling them towards a terrible destiny.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They screamed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Biggs and Amilyn flinched back warily as their friends collapsed. They waited cautiously as Luke and Leia slowly began to pull themselves back upright again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” Luke said. There were tears streaked down his face.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I wasn’t thinking straight,” Leia confessed, shaken. “What’ve we done?” She asked Luke.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know, but we have to stop it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So, you’re a witchfinder. What’s that like then?” The woman who’d applied the bacta to his head wound asked Newt. “I took your pin away, by the way. Didn’t fancy getting stuck with it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt squirmed. He felt a bit intimidated by Anathema, who seemed much more competent and worldly than he could hope to be. He didn’t want her to think that he was an idiot. “I’m not </span>
  <em>
    <span>really </span>
  </em>
  <span>a witchfinder. I’m an Imperial cadet. I just needed something to get me out of the house. There aren’t really any witches.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The woman with the long black hair and goggles pursed her lips, clearly finding this explanation wanting. “Anathema Device,” she introduced herself, shoving a hand at Newt for him to shake. “I really am a witch. Also, a Rebel terrorist.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt gaped.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You should read this.” Anathema pressed a piece of flimsi into Newt’s hand. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“When hopper of skyes inverted be, at intervention of exiled Knighte, a man with bruises upon his head will be on your bed, aching his head for bacta’s balm.” </span>
  </em>
  <span>It failed to become more comprehensible when Newt had read it a second time, or a third.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema took his bewilderment in stride. “Have you ever heard of Agnes Nutter? She was a witch, 300 years ago. One of your ancestors burned her at the stake. Well, tried to.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“One of my ancestors?” Newt looked horrified. Wait, did Anathema think he belonged to some sort of bizarre ancestral cult of nutters who went around lighting people on fire? Whatever some ancestor of his had done, he certainly didn’t intend to hurt anyone! “I’m not going to burn anyone.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema grinned. “Then I promise not to blow anyone up with thermal detonators like Agnes did, either.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt laughed uneasily, realized that Anathema was entirely serious, and abruptly stopped.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Agnes wrote a book of prophecies. That’s how I knew about the speeder crash. My family have been deciphering her prophecies for generations, now--well, that and building explosives. That’s what all these notes are for. They’re notes about Agnes’ prophecies.” Anathema indicated the stack of flimsi. “You could say we’re professional descendants.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How many prophecies are there?” Newt asked. He had trouble believing in precognition, but was interested in spite of himself. He liked cataloguing and analyzing things. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thousands. More and more are coming true, now, as we get closer to Armageddon.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Armageddon?” Newt chuckled. “When’s that, then?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema checked her chrono. “In about four hours and fifteen minutes.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt squeaked. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The end of the galaxy starts here today, according to Agnes, somewhere in the skies above Alderaan. I just can’t find it.” Anathema flung the flimsi back onto the rest of the stack in frustration. “The antichrist, the great beast, it’s supposed to be here, on Alderaan, but it’s impossible to find.” She handed Newt the prophecy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>"When the skies are crimson seen, then ye both must take to the skyes, where there is no Moone, but a Star of Death. The twinned suns, princess and farmer, shalle take the worlde by Force."</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Star of Death?” Newt asked quietly. “I’ve been, well, going through articles about phenomena, strange occurrences, rumors and conspiracies. There was this one about an Imperial satellite-- They called it a Death Star. I meant to look into it. Only, then Major Shadwell got a call, and sent me here to watch someone called Leia Organa for signs of the occult.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Leia Organa?” Anathema echoed in disbelief, following Newt’s train of thought as it hurtled towards its dubious conclusion. “She’s not occult. She’s definitely not the antichrist! She’s just a sweet kid!” Anathema thought back to the way Amilyn had frozen in place, in the kitchen earlier, of the command in Leia’s voice and how impossible it had seemed to disobey it. “She can’t be.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bartending is a profession that requires a certain sort of being, especially in a place like Mos Eisley spaceport. One had to be an adept judge of character, the sort of individual who was able to read a customer at a glance, and determine whether they needed a shoulder to cry on, or whether they were likely to draw a blaster if one so much as asked their name. Quick, practical, and ready for trouble, Madame Tracy was an excellent bartender. (3)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All the same qualities that made Madame Tracy an excellent bartender, also made her an excellent host for a discorporated angel. Still, one had to be polite about these things. After scaring off her regulars, Madame Tracy poured two glasses of emerald wine. “Right,” she said. “Best you tell me the whole story, then.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale did.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah,” Madame Tracy said finally. “Well. I suppose that explains what got Mister Shadwell in such a state, the poor dear.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mm.” Aziraphale, who had been accidentally discorporated trying to stop the man from stepping into a portal, felt rather less sympathetic toward the Witchfinder Sergeant.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You see, though, why I need your help?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, certainly, Mister Fell. You’ve got to get to Alderaanian space, to this Death Star, to stop the antichrist before she ends the world. I’m happy to give you a lift, only—all I’ve got is an old wreck of a pod racer, in the lot behind the cantina. The last owner left it here, and it hasn’t been used since. I doubt it flies.” She frowned. “Certainly, it’s not built for spaceflight.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that, my dear lady,” Aziraphale said airily, his voice emerging from her own throat. The whole thing made having a conversation a bit awkward, really. “I believe that we will find it miraculously space-worthy.” He clapped her hands together. “Now, what about weaponry? Do you have a blaster?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Madame Tracy rolled her eyes under her shimmering eyeshadow. “Of course not. A really good bartender never </span>
  <em>
    <span>needs </span>
  </em>
  <span>a blaster to terrify patrons into submission.” She thought for a moment. “Mister Shadwell has one, I think. A great big thing, hanging on his wall.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale grimaced, but then shrugged. “Needs must,” he decided. “Let’s go talk to the Sergeant. Quickly, please. I need to stop somewhere along the way to Alderaan.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale had never been to Crowley’s lair before. (4) It was everything he might have imagined it would be, based on Crowley’s sense of style, and the way he presented himself to the universe. Sleek, draped in darkness, full of angular lines, and a bit dangerous-looking. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The hooded acolyte at the door looked up from where they were watching an entertainment holo, startled. “Who enters the dread fortress of the Dark Lord Crowley?” They asked hastily, shutting the vid off, and attempting to look intimidating.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale cleared Madame Tracy’s throat. “Ah, I’m here to see Crowley. I’m an old friend.” I hope I still am, he thought, remembering the look of betrayal on Crowley’s face, and the way the demon had cut off Aziraphale’s comm call so abruptly. Guilt pressed at Aziraphale. The desire to apologize and beg Crowley’s forgiveness felt even more urgent and immediate than the knowledge that the antichrist and the Death Star were about to end all of existence.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The acolyte shrugged. “Go on though, I guess. I’m not going to try to stop you, after what happened to B’ob, earlier.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale frowned, feeling Madame Tracy’s lips purse. “What did happen?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There were these two beings that stormed through, looking for Lord Crowley. They rose right up through the floor, and when B’ob tried to stop them, they set him on fire.” The acolyte shuddered. “There wasn’t anything left of him, just a pile of ashes. Never seen anything like it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Demons? Aziraphale’s breath caught in worry. This was everything he’d ever feared might happen to his friend. They’d been found out, and Hell would hurt Crowley for their association. He sprinted for the hallway that led further into the fortress, as fast as Madame Tracy’s legs could carry him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>While Aziraphale had never been in the lair, thousands of years of poking around in Jedi libraries had acquainted him with the knowledge of the standard layout of most Sith strongholds. Sure enough, as he ran down the narrow hallway, lit by pale orbs of light set into the wall, he could see that the path was widening. At the end of the hall, further towards the center of the ominous building, was a heavy black door. It should have been firmly shut, but, to Aziraphale’s horror, it was ajar, and hanging from its hinges, as if it had been forced open by some tremendous explosion.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Crowley!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He rushed through the door, only to stop in horror, as he realized that he was standing in a puddle of sulfurous ash. “No,” he whispered. “No, no, no. Please, God, no.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It might not be him, Aziraphale thought desperately. The acolyte had indicated that there had been other demons here. This was one of them. It had to be. Aziraphale couldn’t seem to breathe properly. Was something wrong with Madame Tracy’s lungs? The air smelled sharply of ozone. His shoes were sticky. He swallowed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The room was in disarray. It looked like it might be a sort of office, with a massive black basalt desk, that had an ostentatious golden throne behind it. The throne was slightly askew, as if someone sitting in it had pushed themselves abruptly to their feet. On the floor next to it was a peculiar radius of bright purple paint splatter. All around the room were strange, finger-like smudges of scorching. Aziraphale’s hands pressed against Madame Tracy’s lips, as if to hold in the scream that was trying to force its way out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not demons, then. Or, at least, not just demons. He had seen the tracery of scorch marks left by lightning before. He had seen sand turned to black-streaked glass by the fury of angels. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Smiting.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A demon had been struck down by the holy wrath of Heaven, manifest as lightning, inside a closed room, where no lightning should have been able to reach.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Someone killed my best friend,” Aziraphale whispered.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley was gone. Aziraphale sank to his knees and wept.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eventually, Madame Tracy wrestled him to his feet again, taking command of her body. “Oh my dear,” she murmured. “He wouldn’t want you to give up.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How can I go on? How can I keep trying to save the universe, when it won’t have him in it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because he loved it, and because he loved you.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>1) </span>
  <span>He hadn’t realized one could be nauseous while not in the possession of a stomach, before.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>2) Well, for the purposes of analogy, anyway. Really, it was nothing like that, at all.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>3) It helped that she was a bit psychic.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>4) Yes, Crowley called it a lair; he enjoyed boosting his big, bad Sith Lord reputation, especially when it involved a minimum of effort on his part. He just had to suggest the idea of what horrors might be lurking in his fortress through its appearance and name, and the human (or non-human) mind filled in the rest more vividly than anything Crowley could have invented, himself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Death Star</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>The Jedi Temple was burning. Crowley had been off-world, when that sixth sense that informed him that Aziraphale was in danger had tripped, and he had headed to Onderon’s spaceport, to get transport on the faster freighter he could find. Coruscant looked a bit like a hellscape from space, lit up as it was with the lights of the perpetual city that covered nearly every square inch of its surface. Once Crowley had disembarked from the freighter and rushed to the Senate district, he realized that Coruscant looked much more like Hell than usual. Galactic City was in chaos. The streets were full of armored figures, carrying blasters. Any civilians unfortunate enough to be out on the streets looked furtive and frantic, as if they wanted to be out of the open streets, as soon as possible.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Crowley spotted the smoke first, forming a thick haze in the sky that made it appear red. The Jedi Temple was on fire. The familiar spires that crowned its tall, sloping walls, were only just visible through the plumes of smoke that obscured the horror unfolding. He could see red firelight flickering low to the ground along the stone edifice. All the signal lights were dark, and the blast doors had been knocked open by a tremendous force. Siege, Crowley thought grimly.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Aziraphale was in that building somewhere. In the library, if Crowley knew the angel, at all (and he did). He was in that building, which had clearly been overrun by a military force, and was now being sacked. Crowley had to find him.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>As he picked his way past the ruined blast doors, the scope of the situation began to dawn on him. A pyre had been built here, at the main entrance of the Temple, so that all of Coruscant could see it still smouldering, stacks of smouldering bodies piled thick atop it. They had been charred nearly beyond recognition, but he could see a belt there, and a lightsaber hilt still clipped to it. The Jedi it had belonged to had not even had time to draw his weapon before being cut down. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>These were the bodies of the Jedi. There had been a slaughter here, Crowley realized with growing dread. He drew his red saber, igniting it, and ventured quickly into the building. He could feel his feet burning with each step onto the sacred ground, but he pressed on anyway. Whatever had happened here, it didn’t seem like Aziraphale was able to get himself out of the Temple, without help. The walls here were thick with carbon scoring, but the hallways were empty. All the bodies that had been here had already been dragged out to the pyre. It was eerie.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Crowley knew the layout of the Jedi Temple well. Whenever Aziraphale wasn’t in his bookstore, he could be found poking through this, and other, Jedi libraries and archives, investigating prophecies and sacred texts. Crowley hadn’t been able to follow him into these spaces, but he liked to stay aware of what his friend was up to, so he knew a lot more about the Jedi, and the mundane routines of their daily lives than anyone masquerading as a Sith Lord really ought to.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>He passed the Room of a Thousand Fountains. What should have been beautiful was made horrifying instead. It was clear that a number of the Temple’s younglings had retreated here, and made a final stand in the garden. Crowley tried not to look at the too-small bodies splayed upon the ground, expressions of surprise and horror still clear on their faces.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>He was in pain, but he pressed onward, ignoring his feet. Aziraphale was in the library, just as Crowley had known that he would be. He was clutching the still form of Jocasta Nu, the head Librarian, even though Crowley could see that she was past the help of even a miracle. Aziraphale heard Crowley’s odd skipping footsteps--the demon was trying to rest as little of himself on the sacred floor as he could--and looked up sharply, visibly tensing to fight.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Aziraphale went wide-eyed when he saw that it was Crowley there, and not whoever was responsible for the carnage. “Crowley! What are you doing here?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Saw the Temple on fire, and knew you’d be right in the thick of it. Wasn’t going to let a little holy ground stop me, when I knew you were in trouble.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Aziraphale’s mouth trembled. He looked sorrowfully down at Madame Nu, and closed her vacantly staring eyes. “It was the Clone Army,” he told Crowley.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Crowley startled. “What?” The clones were loyal to their Jedi commanders almost to a fault. For them to have turned on the Jedi without warning was inconceivable. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“It was like something was controlling them, as if they had received some order to turn on the Jedi, and it had robbed them of free will.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>That was offensive. Crowley had worked quite hard to make sure that mortal beings always had choices. Free will was what made them interesting. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“There was a Sith,” Aziraphale continued. “He led them in the slaughter of the Jedi. He killed the younglings, Crowley.” Aziraphale dashed tears off his face in an angry swipe of the back of his gloved hand. “He wanted Jocasta to give him some information, and when she refused, he cut her down with his lightsaber. He couldn’t sense me, never even knew I was in the artifact vault, since I have no presence in the Force.” Aziraphale shook his head in helpless grief. “Why would anyone do this, Crowley?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Crowley pulled Aziraphale to his feet, and began gently guiding the angel out of the charnel house that had once been his home. “I don’t know, Angel. I don’t know.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>***</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It takes Crowley a little while to notice that he still has the book clutched in his hand. He’s got the bottle of nikta in one hand, and goes to reach for his glass with the other, only to realize that that hand already has a book in its grip. “Turning into the angel,” he mutters. “Won’t let go of a book, even if the world is ending.” His breath hitched. The smoke, he told himself. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He could still smell the char, on his robes. It won’t ever wash out, not even with a miracle; he’ll never be able to wear these clothes again, because the smell will take him straight back to the bookshop, full of flames, the panic as he tore through it, looking for someone who was -- gone.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hellfire. Aziraphale would never let anything less overcome him, destroy his beloved shop and all of his books. He’d never believed it could happen, but Hell had come for his angel.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley thought back to that aborted comm call. Had Aziraphale been trying to call Crowley for help? And Crowley had shut the call off, without responding. Had Aziraphale thought he was still angry? He </span>
  <em>
    <span>was </span>
  </em>
  <span>still angry, but he never would have abandoned Aziraphale. He thought again of their argument in Monument Plaza. Even after that, despite everything they’d both said, Crowley had never intended to leave Aziraphale behind. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’m leaving, Angel, and when I’m off discovering new worlds in wild space? I won’t even think about you! </span>
  </em>
  <span>Had Aziraphale died believing that was really true?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley stared down at the book, a grim souvenir of the destruction of his dearest friend. The embossed gold-leaf title glimmered dimly up at him. </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. </span>
  </em>
  <span>It was the one that the girl on the speeder bike had left in his </span>
  <em>
    <span>Bentley, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he remembered. “Didn’t get around to returning it, then, Angel?” he asked the book. It was so like Aziraphale. Crowley knew that Aziraphale collected books of prophecy. The angel had probably been swayed by an attractively rare volume. He’d have gotten around to returning it eventually, but not before he’d read it himself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sure enough, Crowley can see a scrap of notepaper sticking out between it’s slightly charred leaves, where the angel had marked his place. Aziraphale would never pick it up again to continue reading, Crowley realized.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He gently flipped the book open, downing a swallow of the potent liquor as he did so. He took in the dense lines of Aziraphale’s handwriting, dashed off in a hurry, and slowly set his glass back down, sobering up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They killed my best friend,” Crowley said, jaw set. The least he could do was fight to save the world his Angel had loved.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>With the name of the antichrist and the location of the Death Star on the scrap of paper in his hand, Crowley strode out of the cantina, and towards his gleaming black speeder.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The thing about having a hellhound for an astromech was that he could hack </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything.</span>
  </em>
  <span> So when Luke and Leia explained to the other two children that they needed to get into the skies of Alderaan, and onto the deadly satellite that had moved into position there, in order to stop the ending of the universe (1), Artoo had burbled happily and helped them steal a starcruiser. It wasn’t anything big. It was a RZ A-Wing clearly only meant to fit two adults, but it seemed to fit four eleven year olds alright. Luke was already very obviously in love with the sleek and maneuverable little craft, and its controls responded to his commands as if it were hooked up directly to his brain. He wondered what he had ever seen in T-16s.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“These four people who’re coming,” Biggs said. “What are they like?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well,” Leia frowned, stumbling a bit, unsure of how to explain what she could feel was coming. “They’re not people, not really. They’re more like ideas, but they look like people.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah, anthropomorphized concepts,” Threepio said, nodding sagely.</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They’re adults, though? How’re we going to stop them?” Biggs pressed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A pod racer cannot fly through space. It is built to skim along, just above the surface of the ground at tremendous speeds. It would take a miracle to get a pod racer spaceworthy, let alone to fly it all the way to Alderaan’s orbit, with two (well, three) passengers aboard.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sergeant Shadwell shrieked and clutched Madame Tracy’s waist in terror, as they hurtled through deep space on a pair of engines and a tiny seating pods strung together with wire and luck. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wheeee!” the cantina owner exclaimed gleefully.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The tractor beam of the Death Star held the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Bentley </span>
  </em>
  <span>fast for a moment, before Crowley exerted every ounce of his will upon it. The speeder shrieked in protest, louder even than the pounding music that reverberated through its interior. Crowley imagined his speeder strong enough to break the tractor beam of a moon-sized military satellite, and so it was. It streaked towards the Death Star like a fiery comet, a pounding bass trailing in its wake.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Inside the Death Star, itself, Anathema and Newt are walking with careful nonchalance through the corridors. Newt is wearing his cadet uniform. Anathema is wearing binders.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can’t believe my clearance codes still work,” Newt muttered to her in disbelief.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can’t believe I’m playing at being a Rebel prisoner.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Shh,” Newt murmured, looking nervously at a passing stormtrooper. “It’s working isn’t it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“C’mon,” Anathema said, not bothering to acknowledge this. “We need to get to a computer console, and figure out how to shut this down. Lucky, I guess, that you’ll be familiar with schematics of Imperial technology. You should be able to help me find the Death Star’s weak point.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Um, about that…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Klaxons blared as the hangar bay door of the Death Star opened wide, succumbing to the will of two antichrists. Stormtroopers scrambled around the nimble spacecraft, as four children disembarked hastily from the A-Wing. Biggs blanched a bit at the sight of all those blasters pointed their way. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Go to sleep,” Luke said, and the stormtroopers did. Amilyn had moved over to a computer terminal, motioning Artoo over, so that the astromech droid could begin decrypting the information for her. The droid beeped in alarm, as the information appeared on the terminal’s screen. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They’re targeting Alderaan! Leia, this thing can destroy planets, and they’ve got it set to fire on Alderaan!” Amilyn tapped frantically at the screen. “There’s a countdown. It’s still powering up, but when it’s done, it’s going to fire!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Right,” Leia snarled fiercely, and grabbed Luke’s hand. “Not if I have anything to say about it.” She took a deep breath, and yelled, “We’re here!” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How are we going to get inside?” Madame Tracy asked. She shouldn’t have been able to speak, unprotected in the vacuum of space. She shouldn’t have been </span>
  <em>
    <span>alive</span>
  </em>
  <span>, unprotected in the vacuum of space.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I suppose we should comm the Satellite?” She answered herself in Aziraphale’s voice. “We’ll have to try to bluff them.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>An A-Wing zipped past them, and the hangar bay doors opened obligingly for it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Or, we could just go through the open door,” Shadwell suggested. He was looking a bit space-sick.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Or, we could just go through that open door!” Aziraphale gunned the engines.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The pod racer hurtled inexplicably through space, and into the hanger of the Death Star, coming to a graceful stop between rows of TIE fighters. Hordes of stormtroopers were scrambling towards the A-Wing, preparing to deal with the intruder. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, there are more of them!” One trooper yelled, pointing in Tracy and Shadwell’s direction. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Is it the Rebels?” Another trooper asked, heading towards them. He looked like the sort that might have an itchy trigger finger.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shadwell brandished his absurdly oversized blaster rifle menacingly. Aziraphale grimaced, and prepared to snap his fingers. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Before he could, the stormtroopers swooned, collapsing like abandoned dolls onto the durasteel floor. Aziraphale blinked in surprise, and cautiously poked the closest trooper with Madame Tracy’s pointy kitten heeled shoe. The helmeted figure snored loudly. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Slowly, those in the hangar became aware of a strange sound, a sort of melodious rumble growing louder, paired with an antique engine. Aziraphale’s head shot up in recognition. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was impossible, but Aziraphale desperately wanted it to be real.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Through the nearly-closed hangar bay door, a fiery shape hurtled. It was billowing streaks of fire behind it, like a meteor that had entered the atmosphere of a planet, having broken free of the tractor beam that had held it in place. It was a speeder, an antique design, black and gleaming. It was not decelerating.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale gasped, and raised a hand, snapping Madame Tracy’s red-nailed fingers. The burning speeder hit the floor, and began sliding towards the TIE fighters, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>miraculously </span>
  </em>
  <span>stopped just short of a nasty crash.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After a moment, the hatch of the speeder opened, and a dark-robed figure jumped out, eyes wide with hope. Crowley had felt the gentle embrace of Aziraphale’s miracle around the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Bentley</span>
  </em>
  <span>, keeping him safe.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was impossible, but Crowley desperately wanted it to be real.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Angel?” Crowley asked shakily.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Crowley!” Aziraphale cried. “I thought—“</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The bookshop, it was on fire! I couldn’t find you—“</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I saw the lightning-scorching, and the holy water—“</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They were both speaking over one another in a jumble, their voices frantic with joy, relief, and remembered fear. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I thought you were dead!” they both exclaimed. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley was clutching Aziraphale, as if to confirm that he was really there. Aziraphale melted slowly into the embrace. They stayed that way for a moment, each marvelling in simply feeling the other drawing breath.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nice dress,” Crowley said, finally taking in the corporation that Aziraphale was possessing. “Suits you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale blushed, and laughed. His heart was in his throat, as he looked up at the friend he’d never thought he’d see again. “Please,” he said quietly. “Forgive me, my dear. You were right. We’re on our own side. There’s no one I’d rather face the end of the world beside.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley swallowed. “I forgive you. And I hope you know,” he grasped Aziraphale’s hand in his, “that I feel the same way.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Four strange figures entered the command bridge to face the children: a muscular woman in vividly red Mandalorian armor holding a lightsaber that burned with amber fire, rather than plasma; the bloated, slimy form of a Hutt, who left a film of ooze in their wake; a tall and thin figure shrouded in coarse sand-colored cloth, face hidden behind a fierce mask, with a gafferti stick on his back; and a figure shrouded entirely in a black cloak, who had a skull for a face.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, dear. Artoo, come away from there,” Threepio fussed, pulling the other hell-droid out of the line of fire, as the four horsebeings of the apocalypse squared off against the children.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It has begun,” Death intoned, inclining his head to the children.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I didn’t want this!” Leia told him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You don’t need to want it. Your existence demands it. Yours, and your brother’s.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia and Luke stared at each other, somehow feeling both deeply surprised, and as if they had known this all along, deep down.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A red-haired figure in black robes stormed in, red lightsaber in hand, with a red-haired woman and a grizzled old man holding a remarkable blaster rifle trailing in his wake. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Brother?” Crowley exclaimed, having the tail end of the exchange. “There are </span>
  <em>
    <span>two </span>
  </em>
  <span>of them? That’s not </span>
  <em>
    <span>fair!</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We know who they are, now,” said Madame Tracy, in Aziraphale’s voice. “Shoot them, and the world is saved.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What?” Shadwell looked taken aback. “They’re just younglings. Surely you can’t--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The woman with the mismatched voice wrested the rifle from his hands, aiming it at the kids. The aim abruptly faltered. “You can’t shoot children!” Madame Tracy exclaimed, this time in her own voice. “Perhaps we should wait,” Aziraphale’s voice reflected.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Until they grow up? Shoot them, Aziraphale!” Crowley yelled. Aziraphale tried, but Madame Tracy jerked the rifle towards the sky.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why are you two people?” Luke asked, in bewilderment. This was incredibly confusing. He’d never seen someone argue with themself before (not literally, at least).</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Long story.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You should go back to being two seperate people,” Luke decided, and, just like that, they did. Aziraphale took stock of himself, startled by the sudden sense of being embodied in a physical corporation again, as Madame Tracy scrambled off to stand beside Sergeant Shadwell, looking a bit shaken. Everything seemed to be working: heart, lungs, sundry other organs, and all his limbs were attached. Aziraphale’s corporation was even back in its beige robes, though the lightsaber had not reappeared. Good riddance, Aziraphale thought. I never want to see the blade that I raised against Crowley, ever again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>War brandished her flaming saber, spinning it in a continuous series of arcs around herself, tired of being ignored. (2) “Enough. I am War. You were made to serve me. To live in me, and die in me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Luke met her gaze. “There are a lot of good reasons to fight,” he said, thinking about it. “I’ve heard stories from spacers of the Clone Wars, and why they went to war. Some of them had to defend things they loved, some of them were forced into fighting, and some of them went away to fight because it was the only way they could find opportunity.” Luke paused, and then continued more quietly. “Once, Aunt Beru told me that my father died in the Clone Wars, though she’d never tell me any more about it than that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>War laughed. “Oh, little boy. You want to be like your Daddy?” In her other hand, a silver hilt appeared. She tossed it at Luke who caught it. “Go on,” she urged. Luke pressed the ignition switch in the hilt, and a shimmering blue plasma blade appeared. Luke considered it, feeling the weight of the saber in his hand, taking in all that it meant. This was his Father’s saber, he knew, without knowing how he knew it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I never met my Father,” Luke said, “and I suppose I know now, that everything I thought I knew about him was wrong.” His eyes flicked to Leia briefly. “Whoever Anakin Skywalker was, though, I’d like to think that he didn’t fight out of hatred, out of a desire to destroy. That he was motivated by love, and not hate. I won’t hate you, even if you’re trying to destroy me and my friends. I won’t strike you, in anger. I won’t fight you, not like this.” Luke took a deep breath, and cast the blue lightsaber aside. “I am a Jedi, like my Father before me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>War shrieked, and vanished in a flare of light.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Amilyn stepped forward to face Pollution, radiant as a queen, staring down the Hutt in the tarnished crown with the pale, milky eyes that oozed black tears. “I believe in a clean world,” she said. “A world without Imperial factories and shipyards poisoning planets! A world without Hutt-owned mines that strip the land!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Hutt howled, and lunged for Amilyn, who grabbed the amber saber that War had dropped, and plunged it into the creature. It vanished in a cloud of oily smoke.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Biggs and the Sandperson eyed one another. “I’ve known famine before. I live on a desert planet, deprivation is never far away. That’s why I believe in sharing what you have to eat, with those who are hungrier than you.” Famine growled, hooting through the distortion of the mask. “I believe in never wasting food or water, when someone else might need them!” Famine vanished in a swirl of sand.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia looked at Death. “This has to stop.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It has,” Death told her, “but they will be back. You’ll all be struggling against them all your lives. We are never far away.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We won’t give up, then,” Leia said. “We’ll keep stopping you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You cannot destroy me. I am creation’s shadow. My destruction would destroy the universe.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know,” Leia said, “and I have to accept that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Death smiled, in as much as a bare skull can smile (3), and spread wings the color of the void of hyperspace, streaked with starlight.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>1) </span>
  <span>Which they were supposed to start, Luke had explained, a bit sheepish at how close a call it had been. But they didn’t want to end the world, so they wouldn’t, Leia added firmly. They didn’t have to do a bad thing that they didn’t want to do, just because someone else said that they should.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>2) Aziraphale and Crowley both recognized that saber. Aziraphale felt a deep sense of embarrassment, and Crowley felt a frisson of delight. This promised centuries of teasing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>3) Arguably, Death was always smiling.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Fathers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema looked at Newt in consideration, the countdown towards the Death Star being at full power ticking down slowly in ominous green on the massive screen behind them. “What </span>
  <em>
    <span>exactly</span>
  </em>
  <span> do you mean? Run that by me again?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I washed out of the Imperial Academy on my first day,” Newt’s words came out of his mouth in a miserable flood. “I’m rubbish with computers. Every time I try to make them work, they break. I brought down every single Imperial communications relay on Tatooine, and when the communications officers got them running again, they’d only broadcast cantina music.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema thought about this. “Every time?” she asked, slowly. “You break them, every single time?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Every single time,” Newt confirmed, staring at the console. “I can’t find a way to power this superweapon down, I can’t even get a navicomp to work properly. We’re doomed.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So don’t shut it down,” Anathema said urgently. “Repair it!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What?” Was Anathema breaking down under the pressure?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You said every computer you try and fix dies, so try and fix the computers that operate the Death Star! Can you get them to run better?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Newt thought about that. It was easy enough. He’d read so many technical manuals, when he’d still been preparing for the written exams to enter the Academy (1). “Well, sure. I’d just pull up this command menu, and type in the sequence--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The computer fizzled and died with a noise like an angry krayt dragon choking on a bone. The entire row of computer banks followed suit, and then the room went dark for a moment, before emergency lighting and shrieking alarms assaulted their senses. “Oh,” Newt said. He’d just saved the planet Alderaan.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The klaxons ceased their wailing abruptly, and the hangar bay flooded with light, the wash of ominous red from the emergency lights dissipating, along with Death. Aziraphale felt as though he could finally draw breath. He turned to Crowley with a wide and trembling smile, only to be brought up short. Crowley was still tense, his lit red saber in his hand. “Crowley?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, it's not over,” Crowley told him, grimly. “Heaven and Hell still want their war.” He glanced at the children, who were eyeing the flaming sword that had been dropped onto the durasteel floor. “You, antichrist-- antichrists?-- what’s your name?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Leia.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Luke.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good job on saving the world, but planet-destroying superweapon or not, the end’s still going to happen.” Crowley shook his head in resignation. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A young man in an Imperial cadet uniform, and a woman in a jacket that was emblazoned with the Rebel Alliance firebird emerged from one of the corridors into the hanger. The woman drew herself up in indignation, and Crowley startled, recognizing her. “Book Girl!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You! You stole my book!” Amilyn and Leia startled slightly realizing this must have been one of the people who had hit Anathema with a speeder.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Catch!” Crowley nonchalantly tossed the charred copy of </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Nice and Accurate Prophecies </span>
  </em>
  <span>to Anathema, who looked like she couldn’t decide whether to feel relieved to finally have it back in her possession, or furious over the careless way it had been treated. Had this man set it on fire? It was all charred around the edges.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What is going on here?” Anathema demanded, taking in the chaos of downed stormtroopers and the discarded saber, crown, and scales of the horsebeings. She should have known the two men with the speeder were up to no good, from the moment she realized the book had gone missing, or, at least, from the moment Newt had described Shadwell’s contacts. She still had trouble believing that Leia had anything to do with all of this chaos, despite her presence here, but these two? Clearly trouble. (2)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, in the beginning--” Aziraphale started. Crowley shushed him, knowing that there wasn’t enough time left in the universe for Aziraphale to get through the story of their mutual history together, even just skipping ahead to the bits about the apocalypse-thwarting.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hello, Leia, Amilyn,” Anathema greeted, focusing her attention back on the kids. “And you two.” She nodded to the stowaways.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You just stopped them from blowing up Alderaan, didn’t you,” Leia realized, eyes shining. She took in the Rebel insignia on Anathema’s jacket with admiration. “That’s why the Death Star powered down.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anathema grinned back. “My boyfriend here did the tricky bit,” she demurred. Newt blushed, scratching at the itchy wool of his cadet uniform.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Everything seemed like it was going to be alright, at that moment, but Crowley still hadn’t relaxed. His eyes kept darting around the wide space of the hangar bay, as if he were expecting something to leap out at them. Soon, their brief reprieve would be over.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was a sudden scent of ozone, and lightning arced alarmingly from one TIE fighter to the next, before coalescing into a figure in a white Imperial Admiral’s uniform with a nasty smile. Aziraphale raised an eyebrow at the Archangel Gabriel’s dubious fashion choices, as he and everyone else scrambled hurriedly away. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was a strange buzzing sound, and the pile of prone stormtroopers on the floor shifted and, like something from out of a horror holo, a hand emerged from beneath them, and a figure rose from the pile of fallen soldiers. One of the troopers snorted loudly, before going back to sleep. The new being smelled faintly of sulfur and burning flesh, and was wearing black fatigues with crimson accents. Rather than an Alliance firebird, a stylized fly spread its wings on the patch on their sleeve.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Lord Beelzebub, what an honor,” Crowley greeted, unhappily. He’d been right, and he wasn’t enjoying it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Crowley,” Beelzebub said flatly. “The traitor. Where’s the girl?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley’s eyes flicked to Leia, despite himself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gabriel smiled, a bit too wide to be genuine. “That one. Princess Leia Organa.” He paced in closer to the children, who were looking at him warily. Leia had her jaw set stubbornly. Gabriel reminded her very much of some of the more unpleasant politicians that her father, Bail Organa, had to deal with in the Imperial Senate. “Young lady, you must restart Armageddon. Right now. The temporary inconvenience of the destruction of the universe cannot get in the way of the greater good.” He loomed obnoxiously into Leia’s space.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’ll see about the greater good,” Beelzebub said sceptically, shooting Gabriel a poisonous look. “But the battle must be decided. Now.” They buzzed ominously. “That izzz your destiny.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You both want to end the world just to see whose gang is best?” Luke asked. This was the sort of petty blood feuding or gang warfare he’d have expected from Tatooine. He was disappointed to realize that the rest of the galaxy was just the same, if on a larger scale.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gabriel stared contemptuously at the sandy-haired boy, clearly annoyed that anyone would dare interrupt his lecturing of Leia. “Obviously,” he scoffed, wrinkling his nose. “It’s the Great Plan. It’s the entire reason for your little friend’s creation, boy.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Does he not know there are two of them? </span>
  </em>
  <span>Crowley wondered. Then again, why would anyone know? Crowley hadn’t ever looked in the pod that held held the infant antichrist--antichrists, as it turned out--maybe no one else had either? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“When all this is over,” Beelzebub crooned to Leia, “you’re going to get to rule the universe. Don’t you want that?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leia snorted. “I’m a princess. I’ve already got the responsibility of being a future Queen of Alderaan. That’s hard enough. Do you know how many obscure law treatises I’ve had to memorize? Not to mention the boring diplomatic dinners I have to attend, even as a kid! Why would I want to rule the entire </span>
  <em>
    <span>galaxy?</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You can’t just refuse to be who you are! This is your destiny! It’s all part of the Great Plan,” Gabriel protested, disbelieving.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Um,” Aziraphale finally spoke up, if hesitantly, and Crowley flinched. What was the angel doing, drawing the attention of their higher-ups? (3) Did Aziraphale want to die sooner? He had to have a plan, that or he was desperate; Aziraphale was so intimidated by Gabriel, he’d never have dared stand up to him, otherwise.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You keep talking about the Great Plan.” Aziraphale drew up his courage, moving to stand beside Leia, who looked up at him. He hoped this worked. It had to be spoken, this slow understanding that had dawned on him over the course of the last eleven years of the universe. “One thing I’m not clear on. Is that the Ineffable Plan?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They’re the </span>
  <em>
    <span>same thing</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” scoffed Gabriel, contemptuously, but there was a flicker of uncertainty in his lavender eyes. He looked afraid, Aziraphale realized.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley moved to flank the antichrists, standing next to Luke. He was catching on to where Aziraphale was going with this. “It’d be a pity if you thought you were following the Great Plan, but you were actually going against God’s Ineffable Plan. I mean, everyone knows the Great Plan.” Everyone present who was not an immortal being or an antichrist looked at one another blankly, clearly not knowing the Great Plan. “But the Ineffable Plan-- Well, you can’t know it, it’s ineffable.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gabriel and Beelzebub locked gazes, looking simultaneously incredibly dangerous and very confused, and turned away from the group, huddling together and exchanging tense whispers. They turned back to face the assorted apocalypse-thwarters after a moment, looking frustrated.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You were put on this world to end it!” Gabriel snarled at Leia. “You’re a disobedient little brat, and I hope someone tells your father.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey!” Luke objected, annoyed at this insult to his newly-discovered sister.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, they will,” Beelzebub promised darkly, their eyes narrowed in a glare.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Archangel and the prince of Hell unceremoniously vanished.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Is that it? Aziraphale wondered. Have we done it? Have we survived the apocalypse? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Suddenly, the entire satellite shook violently. Somewhere above them, they could hear durasteel creaking alarmingly. A pair of TIE fighters fell into each other, as the floor bucked like a liquid wave, the two starfighters becoming a pile of tangled scrap metal. Computer consoles, speakers, and comm boxes exploded in showers of sparks. Suddenly the hangar felt oppressively hot.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, no, no, no,” Crowley pleaded. “No!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aziraphale felt as though he were a very small prey animal, in the gaze of a very large predator. “What’s happening?” he asked Crowley, urgently. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They did it. They told her father. And her Satanic father is not happy, not with either of his kids.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shadwell brandished his blaster rifle, hovering protectively beside Madame Tracy, who looked touched by the Sergeant’s gesture, despite her alarm at the Death Star beginning to shake to pieces around them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley looked at Aziraphale helplessly. There was so much that he hadn’t said, but it seemed too late for a grand gesture now. He hoped Aziraphale knew, anyway. “Was nice knowing you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They were out of time. Aziraphale had wasted so much, and now there wasn’t any more time left for them. “We can’t give up now. Come up with something or I’ll--” Aziraphale’s eyes flicked to the discarded amber lightsaber’s hilt, and he determinedly looked away again. “Or I’ll never talk to you again.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crowley hissed, wracking his mind for a plan. He didn’t have one. He could, at least, grant them just a moment more. With a massive exertion of will, Crowley pulled himself, Aziraphale, Luke and Leia outside of the flow of time, into the space between milliseconds. It was a peculiarly barren and bright space, where pretenses were stripped away. Aziraphale and Crowley looked like what they were, an angel and a demon, feathered wings outstretched. Luke and Leia looked like what they were, as well, two frightened children. They looked very human.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Listen,” Crowley told them, “Your father is coming to destroy us.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My father wouldn’t hurt anyone,” Leia said in confusion. Bail Organa was the sort of father who tucked her into bed and read her her favorite story, one in which a daring princess saved her friends from a fearsome dragon. Bail Organa was the sort of father who surprised her mother with bouquets of flame-roses, for no reason at all, accidentally burned the toast, and always remembered to buy Leia a present when he had to go off-world on a diplomatic mission.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My father is dead. He died when I was a baby,” Luke added. Luke knew very little about Anakin Skywalker, and had known from the moment that War had handed him his father’s lightsaber that most of what he had been told had been a lie, but Luke wanted to believe that there was good in his father.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not your human dads. Satan. He is coming, and he is angry.” Crowley’s voice was serious, pressing the urgency of what they faced onto them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How can we stop him?” Leia asked. “Do you want me to fight him?” Leia had been in a lot of fights. She didn’t like bullies. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t think that would do any good,” Crowley responded, somberly. “You two, you’re going to have to work together to come up with something else.” Luke and Leia looked at one another, visibly overwhelmed. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’re just kids,” Luke said, a bit shakily. He missed his Aunt and Uncle. Leia grabbed his hand in hers, trying to comfort him, despite her own fears.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s not a bad thing,” Aziraphale reassured him gently. “I was worried you’d be Hell incarnate, but you’re not. You’re not Heaven incarnate, either.” The angel smiled at the twins. “You’re much better. The two of you, you’re human incarnate.” He reached to grasp Luke’s free hand, and Crowley clasped Leia’s. “Whatever happens, we’re beside you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The twins’ heads bent together conspiratorially, and, at the speed of thought, they formulated their plan.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Death Star was on fire, and pieces of durasteel crashed downward from above them, crushing viewing platforms and TIEs. There was a sound like a terrible snarling scream, that made them clap their hands over their ears, and a cloud of billowing smoke engulfed them, obliterating their vision. “Where are my children?” howled a voice like the explosion of a planet being destroyed. “Come here, both of you!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The twins clutched each other, terrified, but defiant. This was their choice. They weren’t going to let anyone make it for them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re not my Father!” Luke yelled. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re not mine, either,” Leia said, fiercely. “My father is the one who’s been there for all my birthdays! Who is scared over me joining the Rebellion, because he doesn’t want me getting hurt! My brother and I don’t have to listen to you!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If I’m in trouble,” Luke added, “it should be with my </span>
  <em>
    <span>father</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Anakin Skywalker, and not with you!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The devil snarled in disbelief, and fury, looming over the two eleven year olds. Amilyn and Biggs huddled behind C-3P0 and R2-D2.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re not my father!” The twins put every ounce of free will and belief in self-determination into the words.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Satan vanished in a burst of flame, and out of that flame appeared a pair of figures, one in gleaming black armor, and the other in the ceremonial garb of an Alderaanian senator. The two men looked at one another in bewildered horror, before taking in the scene of chaos around them, and the jarring sight of children in the middle of a top-secret Imperial weapons satellite. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Luke and Leia gaped in relief-tinged confusion. They had some understanding of the way that they had just enforced their will on reality, but this wasn’t quite what they’d expected the result to look like. Luke was particularly confused. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Leia!” Bail Organa gasped, terrified, rushing to his daughter. He pulled her into a fierce hug, before placing himself firmly between her and the Lord of the Sith.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What have you done? Why am I here?” Snarled Darth Vader. His hand hovered by his saber for a moment, though there didn’t seem to be any active threat. The red-haired man was dressed like a Sith, though...</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not sure,” Luke said. Then he hesitated, before asking hopefully. “Unless-- Are you Anakin Skywalker? You don’t look how I imagined my Father would look, but, maybe…” He trailed off, looking up at the Sith Lord with big blue eyes. Darth Vader jolted, shaken by recognition and familiarity at the boy’s features.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Father?” Darth Vader’s respirator hitched. “What is your name, boy?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Luke Skywalker.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Out of a corridor, panting, lightsaber lit, burst Obi-Wan, just a bit too late.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Luke!” he cried out. “Don’t go with him! Don’t believe anything he tells you!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You!” hissed Vader. “You kept my son from me.” His red lightsaber ignited with a hiss. He moved to stride towards the Jedi exile, ready to strike the man down, but Luke very deliberately stepped into his father’s path, looking at Obi-Wan in curiosity.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Old Ben?” Luke asked, bewildered by the sudden appearance of the old hermit who lived in the Dune Wastes. What was Old Ben doing off of Tatooine? Why did he have a weapon like Luke’s father’s? He shook his head. “Right,” he decided, setting his jaw stubbornly. “I can see that this is going to be a very long story, and that you two have a lot to talk about, as well. So we’re going to do that. We’re going to talk things out, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>no one</span>
  </em>
  <span> is going to be using a lightsaber against </span>
  <em>
    <span>anyone</span>
  </em>
  <span> else. And not a blaster, either.” He looked at them both firmly, unwilling to budge, and the Jedi and the Sith Lord found themselves unable to disagree with the antichrist. Luke looked delighted that they had reached an accord.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’d better do it away from this satellite,” Leia spoke up. “It’s going to explode. Can’t you feel it?” The Death Star rumbled ominously around them.</span>
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  <span>“Right.” They all scrambled for the escape pods.</span>
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  <span>***</span>
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  <span>1) He hadn’t been required to take a practicum, or he’d never have made it to the Imperial Academy for that single day.</span>
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  <span>2) Anathema knew Leia in a very limited context, and had no idea, yet, just how much trouble the princess of Alderaan could actually cause. The Empire would soon find out, much to its displeasure.</span>
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  <span>3) Or lower-downs, in Beelzebub’s case.</span>
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<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Epilogue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>In the Queen Aquilae Memorial Park in Aldera City, on the planet Alderaan, there is a discreet bench overlooking a duck pond. It is a meeting place for agents on opposing sides of conflicts. Deals had been struck there, secrets exchanged, and betrayals arranged. That day--a day which should not have existed if all had gone according to their Plan--the two beings meeting there were discussing treachery.</p><p>“Obviouzzzly, they must be punished,” Beelzebub hissed, glaring at the ducks that kept sidling closer, hopeful that the two beings on the bench would have some bread for them. “Do you know how difficult it is to get a horde of bloodthirsty demons to stand down, when the battle they’ve been waiting for for six thouzzzand years gets called off?” Beezelbub scowled, and rubbed the bridge of their nose, feeling the headache that had been plaguing them since the Notmageddon intensifying. “An example must be made.”</p><p>“About as difficult as getting the serried ranks of angels to stand down from a war footing,” Gabriel replied dryly. He was visibly struggling to maintain a pretense of angelic geniality; his lavender-colored eyes gave away his frustrated anger. “I would very much like to arrange a summary execution for Aziraphale,” Gabriel confessed, a beatific smile stretching dreamily across his face, as he allowed himself to imagine the Principality’s fiery death. The smile abruptly slipped off of his face, and a muscle twitched next to his eye. “Unfortunately, there are... <em> complications. </em>” He made the word sound like an epithet.</p><p>“Complications?” Beelzebub asked, sharply. “What sort of complications?”</p><p>Gabriel grimaced. “When I returned to Heaven, in the wake of the… notpocalypse--<em> after </em>I finally got the Host to stand down, and go back to work--the Quartermaster of the Host came to me with a... disconcerting story.” He searched for words. “Apparently, Aziraphale was discorporated at some point, not long before our meeting on the Death Star.” </p><p>Beelzebub opened their mouth to interject, but Gabriel continued on forcefully. “Yes, I know, he had a body when we saw him--no, I don’t know how he got it--but that isn’t the point. Aziraphale returned to Heaven, briefly, when he lost his corporation, and the Quartermaster confronted him about his conduct.” Beelzebub snorted. “Aziraphale insisted that he had to be allowed to return to the material plane. When the Quartermaster tried to stop him, Aziraphale-- Aziraphale did something, possessed him, or manipulated his mind, to get him to stand aside.”</p><p>Beelzebub frowned. “That sounds like demonic behavior.”</p><p>“That’s what the Quartermaster said, but Aziraphale told him it was a thing humans can do. And mortal non-humans, I suppose. ‘Jedi,’ apparently. Aziraphale seemed just as surprised as anyone, at what he had done.”</p><p>Beelzebub swallowed. “Something zzzimilar happened with Crowley,” they admitted reluctantly. “Two of the Dukes of Hell, Ligur and Hastur, went to his lair on Almas to confront him about his behavior. We’d discovered that he was collaborating with the angel, that he’d been shirking his infernal duties. He used <em> holy water </em>on Ligur. Killed him.” Gabriel looked livid, realizing exactly who must have supplied the holy water to the demon. </p><p>“Missed Hastur, though,” Beelzebub continued, “Crowley tried to make Hastur believe that he had more of the holy water, but Hastur wasn’t fooled by the trick. Was about to tear Crowley limb from limb (and that would have been just for starters), when Crowley called up <em> lightning. </em>Dizzzcorporated Hastur on the spot.”</p><p>“That sounds like smiting,” Gabriel pointed out, one eyebrow raised.</p><p>“Exzzzactly. But, apparently, it’s a human thing, too--yes, yes, and aliens, as well. ‘Sith’ can call lightning to themselves. No miracles involved.”</p><p>“Damn,” Gabriel sighed. “Well, that confirms it.”</p><p>“Confirms what?” Beelzebub asked suspiciously. </p><p>“That we aren’t going to be able to execute either of the traitors.” Gabriel looked profoundly disappointed by this.</p><p>“What?! <em> Why? </em>”</p><p>“Well, isn’t it obvious? Angels aren’t Jedi, and demons aren’t Sith. <em> Mortals are. </em>They aren’t our jurisdiction anymore.”</p><p>Beelzebub swore so vividly and creatively that even the ducks blushed. (1)</p><p>***</p><p>It had been six months since the Armegeddidn’t. Aziraphale and Crowley were enjoying every minute of it. </p><p>Of course, there had been terrified anticipation on the first day after the world had failed to end. Crowley and Aziraphale had holed up together in Crowley’s lair. They had been waiting for the metaphorical sword poised above their heads to finally fall. They both knew that their superiors wouldn’t let their involvement in the debacle go, that they’d be looking for someone to blame for all of it. The antichrists were inviolable, but Aziraphale and Crowley certainly weren’t. </p><p>In the hours spent waiting for what the dawn would hold for them, Aziraphale had sat down beside Crowley on the black basalt bench in the meditation garden of Crowley’s “Sith” lair. After they’d been sitting together in comfortable silence for a time, he’d reached out and carefully laced their fingers together. Crowley had glanced away from where he’d been staring distractedly into the dense tropical (and, in some cases, carnivorous) greenery around them, searching Aziraphale’s face with his eyes. Whatever he saw there, it had seemed to be what he’d been looking for. He’d squeezed Azirphale’s hand with his own, and slowly, deliberately leaned in to kiss him.</p><p>To say that time stopped for them would be a lie. Rather, they felt it intimately; every single moment of their history that had brought them to this instant, every moment that they had fought for, the urgency of knowing, better than any other immortal beings, that time was finite. As their lips pressed together, first tentatively, and then with growing confidence, they affirmed to one another that, however much time remained to them, there was no one in the universe that they would rather spend it with.</p><p>When Aziraphale had gotten up to prepare some Sapir tea the next morning, there had been a pair of sealed letters on Crowley’s kitchen table. (2) One had smelled strongly of brimstone, and its seal had been embossed with the emblem of a fly. The other had carried a faint scent of frankincense and had sparkled. (3) Aziraphale had picked the second envelope up cautiously, pulling a knife from one of Crowley’s drawers to slit it open. His eyes had flicked across the parchment with growing disbelief. “Crowley!” he’d yelled.</p><p>“Whu-- Angel, what--” A sleep-rumpled demon scrambled into the kitchen, looking alarmed. The alarm had not decreased when he saw what Aziraphale was holding. He’d looked at Aziraphale in concern, wondering why the angel looked so relaxed. Was the news so bad that Aziraphale was in denial? “Is it--?” he’d pointed vaguely upwards. </p><p>“Yes! Oh, Crowley, you won’t believe it!” Aziraphale was laughing! “Open yours,” Aziraphale had told him.</p><p>Crowley had swallowed, but done as Aziraphale asked. His uncovered yellow eyes had flicked across the letter, reading it with growing disbelief. <em> “Laid off?” </em></p><p>“Oh, is that what yours says?” Aziraphale had asked, cheerfully. “Mine is more along the lines of forced retirement.”</p><p>“Yeah, Hell doesn’t really believe in retirement, unless it’s the kind where you retire from <em> existence.” </em>Crowley had shaken his head. “What does this even mean?”</p><p>“They think we’ve gone native,” Aziraphale had told him, looking positively gleeful. “Your lightning and my mind trick, those were mortal things. They think we’re more human than not, now. They can’t punish us, because we’re not their jurisdiction, anymore. They think we have free will!”</p><p>Crowley had thought about this, and then looked at Aziraphale with softness in his expression, before leaning in to kiss him. “Well, maybe we do.”</p><p>The six months after that were like one long honeymoon. They set out to celebrate the universe’s continued existence, and explore what it meant to be on their own side. They revisited favorite haunts: that patisserie on Mandalore that made those delicate plom-bloom scented cakes, that magnificent observatory on the Plaintive Hand plateau on Jakku where Crowley told Aziraphale the stories of the stars and constellations while they watched them rise over the desert, the Opera House in the Uscru district of Coruscant. They were delighted to discover that both the <em> Bentley </em>and Aziraphale’s bookstore had been restored by a pair of grateful antichrists. (4) </p><p>After revisiting old favorites, they set out to discover new ones together. Feeling nostalgic, they toured gardens. Crowley discovered that he loved lounging in the sun under the glass dome of the Nubian Palace’s solar garden, particularly while draped around Aziraphale’s neck in serpent form. They enjoyed a fine vintage of Toniray wine together in the floating Skygarden above Hanna City on Chandrila. Aziraphale laughed helplessly at Crowley’s stupefied expression when a magenta butterfly attempted to land on the demon’s nose in the gardens of New Escrow, on Aargau. They marvelled together at the Floating Rock Gardens of Ryloth, each adding their own shining pebbles to the cloud formations formed of wind-lifted stone.</p><p>Today, they were in the Alaphoe Gardens on the planet Procopia. They had spent a pleasant afternoon discovering all the quiet groves and hidden nooks in the expansive gardens where a couple might sneak away to kiss one another silly. Now they were reclining together on a stone bench next to a gnarled old tree. Crowley’s head was in Aziraphale’s lap, as the angel carded gentle fingers through his red hair. Crowley opened his eyes a bit, peering up at Aziraphale from under heavy lids, drinking in the sight of the angel looking down at him with love. Slowly, the tree above them came into focus. Crowley grinned up at the vividly red apples in its branches. </p><p>This was the beginning of the rest of their lives. </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>1) Yes, Crowley, they do have ears.</p><p>2) Of course, the Sith fortress had a kitchen. Even Sith Lords need a place to make caf, and eat a sandwich, once in a while.</p><p>3) Heaven was unfamiliar with the concept of a glitter bomb, but this letter’s effect would be similar, and just as indelibly lasting.</p><p>4) And if Aziraphale’s bookshop now contained books such as <em> Jedi Apprentice Adventures, Goodnight Moon of Endor, </em> and <em> The Princess Who Saved the Galaxy, </em> well, they were all first editions, so who was he to object? And if the <em> Bentley </em>had an inexplicable hyperdrive and the capacity for interstellar flight, that a standard antique airspeeder really shouldn’t? Crowley found it delightful, especially when Aziraphale, in the passenger seat, shrieked and clutched Crowley’s arm.</p><p>
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